"W. M. Rossetti's diary, as presented here, covers a particularly important period for the Rossettis. In 1870 Dante Gabriel Rossetti published the poems which had been recovered from his wife's tomb in 1869, together with some unpublished poems written in previous years. 1871 saw the violent attack on Dante Gabriel and Swinburne by Robert Buchanan in his article "The Fleshly School of Poetry", followed by the venomous pamphlet of the same title. 1872 was marked by the collapse fo Dante Gabriel's health; in his diary W. M. Rossetti follows the course of the poet's illness and depression. There are descriptions of Dante Gabriel's activities as a painter and of his sometimes picturesque dealings with his patrons. The diary refers to the serious illness of Christina Rossetti in 1871-3 and gives a detailed account of her transactions with her illustrators and publishers, both English and American. Another particularly interesting feature of the diary is the record of W. M. Rossetti's conversations with Trelawny about Shelley and Byron, in which he appears as a literary critic of great insight. It was through him that James Thomson ('B. V. ') and Walt Whitman gained recognition from the English public. These pages also relate a journey in Northern Italy and reveal W. M. Rossetti's knowledge of Italian history and literature. The diary represents a unique account of literary and artistic life in England, France, Germany, and Italy in the nineteenth century. "-jacket cover summary.