Rossetti

Rossetti: His Life and Works by Evelyn Waugh, 227 pages

In this biographical study Evelyn Waugh seeks to understand both Dante Gabriel Rossetti's success and his failure.  The former, he concludes, demands a spiritual aesthetics that transcends formal analysis, while the latter is best explained by the artist's personal tragedies and character flaws.  Rossetti spent his career pursuing an ideal of the feminine, but was sabotaged by his own indiscipline and irresponsibility.

Rossetti was Waugh's first full-length book, but if his development is certainly not complete the voice is already unmistakable his.  Especially delightful are his account of Rossetti and Whistler's shared mania for blue china and the ethics of reviewing the books of one's friends, although equally characteristic is his vivid description of his subject's isolation, paranoia, and despair.