Today has been cold and grey, the kind of day that makes me want to do nothing other than curl up and read. I’ve been reading A Private Disgrace: Lizzie Borden by Daylight, which I recently scooped up at a library book sale. As I set it aside, I thought about the fact that reading a book I’ve never read…
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“The best thing for being sad is to learn something.”
I’ve spent my entire adult life pursuing Pre-Raphaelite art and in doing so, I find that what I actually discover is myself. Art and literature are crucial to my well-being, it provides a framework to draw upon when I need to process heavy emotion. If daily life intervenes and I allow my pursuit of art to fall to the wayside,…
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The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter
One of my favorite posts on this site is Monstrous Women, where I briefly discuss my admiration for not only Mary Shelley, but women in fiction and myth that can be considered monstrosities. They pop up on Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood repeatedly. Lamia, for example, or Sidonia and Medusa. The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter was a delight to read,…
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Summer Reading
Sometimes my reading life is haphazard and I dip into whatever strikes me fancy. (The right book, more often than not, seems to find me instead of the other way around.) Other times, I get a great deal of joy in creating an active reading plan to pursue. On Monday I posted William Michael Rossetti’s account of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s…
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A Rossetti Reading List
I’ve been re-reading Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Family Letters, edited by his brother William Michael Rossetti. I was struck by this passage about DGR’s reading habits. First of all, I love William Michael’s descriptors. Saying Rossetti ‘drunk deep of an author’ and ‘surged through its pages like a flame’ presents a reading life that mirrors the way I feel about my…
