Page:Rossetti papers, 1862 to 1870 (1903).djvu/9

 PREFACE

few words may suffice for ushering-in this volume.

In 1899 I published two separate books—named respectively, Ruskin, Rossetti, Præraphaelitism, and Præraphaelite Diaries and Letters. They both consist of letters, journals, and similar papers, of old date. The main though not the exclusive object of these books is to show forth the career of my brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti. They carried the record up to February 1862, when his Wife died: and in the present volume I prolong the record up to April 1870, when his first book of original poetry, entitled Poems, was published.

As in the two volumes mentioned above, so also here, I adopt a strictly chronological arrangement of my materials, whatever may be the diversity of subject-matter. Diaries however are allowed to run on uninterruptedly year by year.

Where I make an omission from any document, I mark the fact by dots. In the volume named Ruskin, Rossetti, Præraphaelitism, I explained that the passages omitted are very generally such as would be of little or no interest to the reader; although occasionally it happens that something which might be of interest is excluded on other grounds. In prefacing the Præraphaelite Diaries and Letters, I might have repeated the same observation: I thought it superfluous to do so, and some critics raised a query as to what could have been the motive for the omissions. Therefore, with respect to the present volume, I recur to my original statement, which once again holds good. I would not deny that,