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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828 - 1882) Rossetti, an important and influential figure in Victorian literature visited Robert Spence Watson (q.v.) at Bensham Grove in Gateshead, and also spent several weeks with William Bell Scott (q.v.) at 14 St Thomas Crescent in 1853. He had written an enthusiastic letter to Scott in 1847, announcing that he had fallen on his collection The Year of the World like a vulture and devoured it at a sitting. In his Autobiographical Notes, published in 1892, Scott writes: D.G. Rossetti made a visit of some weeks to me at Newcastle in 1853, when I was preparing my little volume, sometimes called Poems by a Painter, from a frontispiece so inscribed. He brought with him some of his own poetry in manuscript, sonnets and other works, so we had much to talk of poetry in the first place and friends in the second, which last subject in his mouth was amusing enough... This visit to Newcastle was partly a holiday for his health. When he left, still complaining, I took him to Hexham... and on to Carlisle and Wetheral, where we parted.Rossetti had disliked Newcastle and was only happy when he reached the countryside. He particularly enjoyed Hexham, where the two friends sat surveying the busy market scene through the window of an inn. The studio at the rear of 14 St Thomas Crescent still stands, prominently marked as the place where Rossetti painted the portrait of Maria Leathart in December 1862. No doubt he accompanied Scott and Swinburne (q.v.) on their outing to Tynemouth at that time.
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