|
In 2019, historian and would-be artist Maggie Winegarden is estranged from her partner Bethany Cross, a Victorian scholar and former poet, who is upset that Maggie often chooses to paint rather than pursue scholarship. While visiting St. Clement’s Church in Hastings, Maggie accidentally discovers a cache of writings said to be Dante’s musings about his career. At least that’s what the vicar told the church caretaker. But instead, they are the diaries of Elizabeth Siddal, Dante’s wife’s, and his sister Christina Rossetti. Maggie wonders why the diaries are buried in the church, who buried them and what secrets they hold.
ISBN: 978-1-960373-15-1 (pb) $19.95 (pb). $9.99 (eb) |
We have little in the way of letters or diaries of either Lizzie or Christina. By deploying the idea of secret diaries, hidden from sight by family members (Christina’s brother William) who were concerned about the reputation of both women should a sapphic affair become public. This echoes the censorship that was applied to Emily Dickinson’s work in the first editions of her poetry. It is a clever device, but does the content which Renk imagines live up to the promise it sets?
To make the long story short: yes, yes it does.
While the love story between these two artists was sweet and heart-wrenching, I believe the most valuable contribution of the novel is the exploration of Siddal’s relative invisibility as an artist. Her ‘tutoring’ by her lover Dante Gabriel Rossetti is critiqued, as are his reactions to any perceived overshadowing of him by Lizzie. My favorite part of this arc was the connection between Siddal and the protofeminist Langham Street circle of women artists and activists. Siddal was indeed friends with several of the members of this historical society, and the novel shines at its brightest when it brings all these remarkable women together in a true and creative sisterhood.
I was also impressed at the way Elizabeth and Christina’s poetry and art was interweaved with the story. Renk did a brilliant job at establishing her vision of their relationship by incorporating their works in the narrative. They are both precursors to and products of their imagined partnership, and were a pleasure to reread (I am a huge fan of Christina Rossetti).
The Lesbian Review
---------
“Blurring the line between biography and fiction, prose and painting, Kathleen Williams Renk's new novel _The Rossetti Diaries_ shines a light on the lives of two women who have been overshadowed by one of the Pre-Raphaelite masters, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Their friendship, and the community of women's artists they built around themselves, still has the power to change the life of the story's narrator, a historian with dreams of being a painter herself.”
Jan Kaiser, Beaverdale Books
---------
'Kathleen Renk takes us beyond Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” to Victorian England and into the imagined lives of women on the periphery of artistic greatness by association with the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood whose careers eclipsed their own. The lover and the sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lizzie Siddall and Christina Rossetti, reveal in diary entries over a century after their death their profound commitment to their own painting and poetry, respectively, along with the immense challenges in being taken seriously as artists and independent thinkers. When the women eventually meet, the passionate bond they form as friends serves as a brief respite from the society they must move among as girls/women experiencing injustices around mental health, health care, sexual abuse and artistic achievement readers will recognize today. At the same time, the novel illuminates the era through memorable historical detail such as the story behind the painting of John Everett Millais’s Ophelia, séance societies, and abortion practices. But one of the most distinct pleasures of the novel was encountering familiar poems of Christina Rossetti resonating with the author’s biographical interpretation, which renders them newly, heart-achingly, accessible. Siddall and Rossetti paid a steep price for daring to live on their own terms as artists and friends; but despite the inevitable tragedy, these are women we should see more of in narrative, women who defined themselves not through men but through their art."
- Carol Roh Spaulding, author of Waiting for Mr. Kim and Other Stories (Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction) and Helen Button.
----------
Poet Christina Rossetti and artist/enigma Elizabeth Siddal step right out of the mid-19th century and into the 21st as Maggie, a historian with artistic longings of her own, finds and reads their diaries, which have been locked away in a dusty chest in the crypts beneath St. Clement's Church. The heartfelt pages of the diaries--imagined into being by Kathleen Renk in her latest novel--bring Rossetti and Siddal to vivid life, recreating their voices to give readers a "behind-the-scenes" experience of the art created by two extraordinary women and the struggles they faced as artists and as women in the Victorian age. Though based on the works of both women and tracing the paths of their lives, Renk's novel takes us beyond the history she knows so well to tantalize the reader with what might have been.
- Mary Helen Stefaniak, award-winning author of The World of Pondside and The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia.
----------
While revealing the lives and love of Pre-Raphaelite poets and painters Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal, this engaging dual-time novel raises timeless questions about money, talent, inequality, and the power of sisterhood. It's a mystery, a romance, and a window onto a little-known sector of Victorian society, all in one.
- C. P. Lesley, host of New Books in Historical Fiction
----------
The Rossetti Diaries explores the indomitable artistic aspirations and achievements of the poet Christina Rossetti and the artist Elizabeth Siddal, her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s, model and eventual wife. At the engaging heart of the novel lies the tormented relationship of Siddal with Gabriel Rossetti and her struggle to realize her creative gifts.
- Mary Martin Devlin, author of The La Motte Woman
To make the long story short: yes, yes it does.
While the love story between these two artists was sweet and heart-wrenching, I believe the most valuable contribution of the novel is the exploration of Siddal’s relative invisibility as an artist. Her ‘tutoring’ by her lover Dante Gabriel Rossetti is critiqued, as are his reactions to any perceived overshadowing of him by Lizzie. My favorite part of this arc was the connection between Siddal and the protofeminist Langham Street circle of women artists and activists. Siddal was indeed friends with several of the members of this historical society, and the novel shines at its brightest when it brings all these remarkable women together in a true and creative sisterhood.
I was also impressed at the way Elizabeth and Christina’s poetry and art was interweaved with the story. Renk did a brilliant job at establishing her vision of their relationship by incorporating their works in the narrative. They are both precursors to and products of their imagined partnership, and were a pleasure to reread (I am a huge fan of Christina Rossetti).
The Lesbian Review
---------
“Blurring the line between biography and fiction, prose and painting, Kathleen Williams Renk's new novel _The Rossetti Diaries_ shines a light on the lives of two women who have been overshadowed by one of the Pre-Raphaelite masters, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Their friendship, and the community of women's artists they built around themselves, still has the power to change the life of the story's narrator, a historian with dreams of being a painter herself.”
Jan Kaiser, Beaverdale Books
---------
'Kathleen Renk takes us beyond Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” to Victorian England and into the imagined lives of women on the periphery of artistic greatness by association with the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood whose careers eclipsed their own. The lover and the sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lizzie Siddall and Christina Rossetti, reveal in diary entries over a century after their death their profound commitment to their own painting and poetry, respectively, along with the immense challenges in being taken seriously as artists and independent thinkers. When the women eventually meet, the passionate bond they form as friends serves as a brief respite from the society they must move among as girls/women experiencing injustices around mental health, health care, sexual abuse and artistic achievement readers will recognize today. At the same time, the novel illuminates the era through memorable historical detail such as the story behind the painting of John Everett Millais’s Ophelia, séance societies, and abortion practices. But one of the most distinct pleasures of the novel was encountering familiar poems of Christina Rossetti resonating with the author’s biographical interpretation, which renders them newly, heart-achingly, accessible. Siddall and Rossetti paid a steep price for daring to live on their own terms as artists and friends; but despite the inevitable tragedy, these are women we should see more of in narrative, women who defined themselves not through men but through their art."
- Carol Roh Spaulding, author of Waiting for Mr. Kim and Other Stories (Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction) and Helen Button.
----------
Poet Christina Rossetti and artist/enigma Elizabeth Siddal step right out of the mid-19th century and into the 21st as Maggie, a historian with artistic longings of her own, finds and reads their diaries, which have been locked away in a dusty chest in the crypts beneath St. Clement's Church. The heartfelt pages of the diaries--imagined into being by Kathleen Renk in her latest novel--bring Rossetti and Siddal to vivid life, recreating their voices to give readers a "behind-the-scenes" experience of the art created by two extraordinary women and the struggles they faced as artists and as women in the Victorian age. Though based on the works of both women and tracing the paths of their lives, Renk's novel takes us beyond the history she knows so well to tantalize the reader with what might have been.
- Mary Helen Stefaniak, award-winning author of The World of Pondside and The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia.
----------
While revealing the lives and love of Pre-Raphaelite poets and painters Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal, this engaging dual-time novel raises timeless questions about money, talent, inequality, and the power of sisterhood. It's a mystery, a romance, and a window onto a little-known sector of Victorian society, all in one.
- C. P. Lesley, host of New Books in Historical Fiction
----------
The Rossetti Diaries explores the indomitable artistic aspirations and achievements of the poet Christina Rossetti and the artist Elizabeth Siddal, her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s, model and eventual wife. At the engaging heart of the novel lies the tormented relationship of Siddal with Gabriel Rossetti and her struggle to realize her creative gifts.
- Mary Martin Devlin, author of The La Motte Woman
Rossetti Diaries book club questions:
- In what ways are Lizzie Siddall’s and Christina Rossetti’s lives similar and dissimilar? What do their diaries reveal about the daily lives of Victorian girls and women?
- Which experiences appear to have the greatest positive or negative effects on Lizzie and Christina when they are young and about to enter womanhood?
- Does Maggie’s interest in artistic expression seem similar to or different from Lizzie’s and Christina’s? If so, how?
- Are Lizzie’s and Christina’s diaries relevant to the lives of young girls/women today? If so, how?
- Utopian societies are generally impossible to achieve. To what extent is the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood a utopian society? Do you agree with John Stuart Mill that for women to have their own art and literature that they need to have their own “country” where men cannot interfere with or thwart women’s artistic expression?
- What is your reaction to Dante Rossetti’s obsession with and treatment of Lizzie?
- Spend some time studying PRB paintings. How are the female figures portrayed?
- When Lizzie states that she wants “to be the painter, not the painted,” what does her desire suggest?
- Ghostly visitations and supernatural events appear frequently in the novel. What do these events suggest about the Victorian Age and our own?
- Virginia Woolf famously argued that women need “rooms of their own” and financial independence in order to achieve their artistic expression. To what extent does this novel support Woolf’s argument?