The House of Life (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
- First Published: 1869
- Type of Work: Poetry
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric sequence, Sonnet
- Subjects: Wives, Love or romance, Sex or sexuality, Nineteenth century, Poetry or poets, England or English people, Life, philosophy of, Life and death, Victorian era or Victorianism
Critical Evaluation:
If the sonnet is, as Dante Gabriel Rossetti claimed, “a moment’s monument,” then The House of Life is the record of a lifetime. In this continually growing and changing sequence of poems, Rossetti recorded the subtlest shifts in a life torn between two great doomed passions: his love for his wife, Elizabeth Siddal, whom he married in 1860 but who died only two years later; and his love for his mistress, Jane Morris, who was married to his friend, colleague, and business partner William Morris.
Sixteen sonnets were first published, not in...
[The entire page is 2007 words long]
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