Aurea Catena

1862–1866

Designing his sister Christina’s books

With his sister, the poet Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel designed and illustrated the first edition of “Goblin Market” (1862) and “The Prince’s Progress” (1866); his key bindings were designed between 1861 and 1871.

1862–1882

A Tudor house at 16 Cheyne Walk

After his wife’s death Rossetti leased a Tudor house at 16 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, where he lived for twenty years surrounded by extravagant furnishings and a parade of exotic birds and animals.

1864–1867

The first commissions from the patron Leyland

In 1864–1867 Rossetti began to receive his first commissions from the patron and collector Frederick Richards Leyland, who collected Renaissance art and Pre-Raphaelite painting.

1869

Poems from the grave: the exhumation

Prevailed upon by friends, in particular Charles Augustus Howell, Rossetti in 1869 had his poems exhumed from his wife’s grave in order to collate and publish them.

1869–1874

Kelmscott Manor: a summer house and a retreat

In 1869 Morris and Rossetti rented Kelmscott Manor at Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, as a summer home, but it became a retreat for Rossetti and Jane Morris: they spent summers there with the Morrises’ children while William Morris travelled to Iceland in 1871 and 1873.

1870

The 1870 “Poems”

In 1870 Rossetti published the volume “Poems by D. G. Rossetti,” collating the recovered texts and some translations, such as his 1869 “Ballad of Dead Ladies” after Villon; the word “yesteryear” is credited to Rossetti as a neologism used for the first time in this translation.