Jan Marsh – författare

For far too long the male protagonists of the Pre-Raphaelite movement have dominated accounts of this revolution in British art. This book aims to redress the balance in showing just how engaged and central women were to the endeavour – as the subjects of the images themselves, certainly, but also in their production. When the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (the ‘PRB’) exhibited their first works in 1849 it heralded a revolution in British art. Styling themselves the ‘Young Painters of England’ this group of young men aimed to overturn stale Victorian artistic conventions and challenge the previous generation with their startling colours and compositions. Think of the images created by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others in their circle, however, and it is not men but pale-faced young women with lustrous, tumbling locks that spring to mind, gazing soulfully from the picture frame or in dramatic scenes painted in glowing colours. Who were these women? What is known of their lives and their roles in a movement that, in successive phases, spanned over half a century?Some were models, plucked from obscurity to pose for figures in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, while others were sisters, wives, daughters and friends of the artists. Several were artists themselves, with aspirations to match those of the men, sharing the same artistic and social networks yet condemned by their gender to occupy a separate sphere. Others inhabited and sustained a male-dominated art world as partners in production, maintaining households and studios and socialising with patrons. Some were skilled in the arts of interior decoration, dressmaking, embroidery, jewellery-making – the fine crafts that formed a supportive tier for the ‘higher’ arts of painting and sculpture. And although their backgrounds and life-experiences certainly varied widely, all were engaged in creating Pre-Raphaelite art.

The first fully illustrated and comprehensive introduction to May Morris's work as an artist, designer and embroiderer, published in association with the V&A. May Morris (1862–1938), younger daughter of William Morris, was a significant figure in the British Arts and Crafts movement and a pioneer of ‘art embroidery’. She ran the embroidery department of Morris & Co., as well as designing textiles, wallpapers and jewellery. May was also an influential teacher and lectured in the UK and America. May Morris: Arts & Crafts Designer is the first publication to present the full range of May Morris’s work and reveals her exceptional skill and originality. It draws together her designs, exquisite embroideries, watercolours, costume and jewellery from museums around the world, and in particular the rich collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the William Morris Gallery, London. The book contains more than 180 items in colour and detailed information on their materials and provenance compiled by leading experts. There are also new insights into May’s personal life and relationships, her social activism and her support for other craftswomen. This authoritative and illuminating study places May Morris, whose reputation has been overshadowed by that of her father, firmly among the leading British designer-makers of the Arts and Crafts movement.

In this most interesting book Jan Marsh examines the paradox underlying the transformation of England from an economy based on agriculture to one based on industry. By 1880 that had happened irreversibly and yet while the rural population was rapidly declining, the back-to-the land movement began to pervade all areas of life and thought. Jan Marsh chronicles the many manifestations of the pastoral impulse. From simple nostalgia to sophisticated political thought she looks at agrarian communes, the folk-song movement, peasant arts, garden cities, the reclamation of common lands, schools, dress and diet, and at the life and thought of such key figures as John Ruskin, William Morris and Edward Carpenter. The book is divided into four parts: The Cult of the Countryside, Tilling the Earth, Rustic Arts and Crafts, Pioneers of the New Life.'I read it with delight. It is beautifully done - the research, the argument and above all the clarity of the writing.' Adam Nicholson 'An eminently readable survey of the pastoral aspect of the aesthetic movement dominated by Ruskin, Morris and Carpenter around the turn of the century'. Deborah Singmaster, Times Literary Supplement'A synoptic study which includes dress reform, the folk-song and folk-dance movement, the impulse to safeguard commons, footpaths and ancient monuments, the revolution ins gardening, progressive schools like Abottsholme and Bedales... when we dine out in Fulham and sit round a scrubbed deal table with a string of onions hanging over earthenware crocks, we are paying tribute to the potency of the ideologies this book entertainingly chronicles.' Colin Ward, New Society

'Jan Marsh's book is the best researched and fullest biography of Rossetti we have yet had.' Fiona MacCarthy, New York Review of Books'Although never formally part of the Pre-Raphaelite poetic school, which included her brother Gabriel, William Morris, and Algernon Swinburne, Christina Rossetti has always been linked to it. [Jan Marsh] gives full attention to both the individual and her unique variety of fantastic and devotional poetry... Marsh delineates an appealing person while examining her adolescent nervous breakdown, abortive engagement to a lapsed Catholic painter, frustrated love for an absentminded scholar, and relationships with her devout but hearty sister, Maria, and with her brothers... The author's steady, sympathetic course through Rossetti's divided life enables readers to delve into the intense and original self most fully expressed in her poetry.' Kirkus Review

Presents 570 newly discovered letters from Jane Morris to diverse correspondents, which radically revise the popular view of a silent, discontented invalid and instead portray her as an independent thinker following her own causes. The vast majority of the letters are unpublished, and are fully annotated.Jane Morris [1839-1914] was a famous Pre-Raphaelite model, wife of William Morris and one of the Victorian age's most enigmatic figures. Her long love affair with Dante Gabriel Rossetti has become the stuff of legend. Later she had a romantic relationship with the adventurer Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. Through her daughter May, she had a contentious interaction with George Bernard Shaw. The greater fame of husband and lovers caused her to be overlooked, but she has always aroused historical interest and partisan debate. Like other women in history her emergence from mute image into speaking subject has come about through feminist scholarship, but is of wide appeal.The editors of this volume have discovered more than 500 letters from Jane to many and diverse correspondents, which radically revise the popular view of a silent, discontented invalid and reveal the range of her interests and opinions. The majority of the letters are unpublished and are fully annotated. They reveal Jane's involvement in many of Morris's endeavours, such as the family firm Morris & Co., the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the 1882 Icelandic Relief Committee, and the Kelmscott Press, and offer new insights into the life of the Morris family. An independent thinker, Jane was politically engaged, although voteless, and her letters are informed by theturbulent events of the 1880s. She did not follow Morris into the Socialist movement, but retained Liberal allegiances and became an ardent supporter of Irish Home Rule. Jane Morris's letters complement those of her husband William Morris [edited by Norman Kelvin] and her lover Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In addition to the texts, the book includes a selection of the portraits and paintings through which Jane became a Pre-Raphaelite icon and archetypal femme fatale.

Elizabeth Siddal is remembered as a Pre-Raphaelite supermodel and the muse and wife of Gabriel Rossetti. She is cast as a tragic heroine much like the Ophelia she modelled in the renowned Millais painting. But Elizabeth Siddal: Her Story overturns this myth. ‘Lizzie’ is presented as an aspirational and independent woman who knew what she wanted and was not afraid to let it be known.With extraordinary stories, including previously undiscovered details of Siddal’s journeys across the UK and to the south of France, Jan Marsh reclaims Siddal’s narrative from the historical record. She brings new perspective to the post-natal, mental trauma Elizabeth suffered after a stillbirth. Furthermore, she casts new light on the renowned story of Siddal’s grave being exhumed for Rossetti’s poems.Jan Marsh explores the finer, little known details of Siddal’s life, including her four months at art school in Sheffield, which Rossetti’s brother always denied. In addition to this, few will know how Siddal was often regarded as difficult and ungrateful.Historical record tends to forget or misremember women, but with Elizabeth Siddal: Her Story, Jan Marsh forces us to take a closer look and see a very different picture. Siddal was not passive and lacking in agency, she was a woman with a strong mind, flourishing career and an admirable talent.

The story of how a group of precocious young artists shook up the British art establishment, told through their works, letters and diaries. An illustrated history of the linked lives and loves of a group of supremely talented artists of late Victorian Britain through their passionate writings. It features the painters, poets, critics and designers: Ford Madox Brown, Edward Burne-Jones, Fanny Cornforth, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, William and Janey Morris, Christina, Dante Gabriel, and William Rossetti, John Ruskin, William Bell Scott and Lizzie Siddal.The artistic aspirations and achievements of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood are revealed alongside the interwoven dramas of their personal lives, in letters, diaries and reminiscences, while their genius is displayed in vivid paintings, drawings, designs and poems. The Pre-Raphaelites was a charmed circles of love, friendship and art. Within an ever-changing flow of affections, and intimacies as richly patterned as a tapestry, they worked together as companions, lovers and partners. They shared tragedy as well as happiness, critical hostility as well as success, even the griefs of infidelity and discord. These creative partnerships, which also created the firm William Morris and Co, revitalised Victorian art and design. The new edition publishes in time for the start of the Burne Jones Exhibition at Tate Britain, starting in October 18. It is a vital book in understanding the Pre-Raphaelite art, which remains as popular and moving as ever.