William Morris and Red House

William Allingham (1824-89)

see also: Wikipedia: William Allingham

The present extract is taken, with thanks, from Jan Marsh, The Pre-Raphaelites ( p42-43), 1998, NPG

Born in Donegal, William Allingham was a young poet who met the PRB on his annual visit to London...Moving to England, Allingham became good friends with the Burne-Joneses and the Morrises. In 1874 he married the artist Helen Patterson, whose sensitive portrait of her husband is shown here.

Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909)

see also: Wikipedia: Algernon Swinburne

The present extract is adapted, with thanks, from Jan Marsh, The Pre-Raphaelites ( p46-47), 1998, NPG

Small in stature, with flaming red hair, Swinburne cut a remarkable figure.

Swinburne first met the Pre-Raphaelities while a student at Oxford, which he left degreeless in order to be a poet. A great admirer of Lizzie Siddal, Swinburne dines with her and Rossetti on the evening before she died.

He introduced Rossetti to the work of Baudelaire and de Sade, and for a while lived in Cheyne Walk, until his increasingly excessive, drunken behavious threatened his friendships. In 1879 he was resued by Theodore Watts-Dunton and taken to live quietly and soberly at The Pines, in Putney. Later in life, he maintained a courteous friendship with Janey Morris, who, with her daughter Jenny went to lunch at Putney in 1896.