Helen Rossetti Angeli

Helen Rossetti Angeli
Born
Helen Maria Madox Rossetti

(1879-11-10)November 10, 1879
DiedSeptember 11, 1969(1969-09-11) (aged 89)
OccupationsWriter, translator, biographer
Parents
FamilyChristina Rossetti (aunt); Dante Gabriel Rossetti (uncle); Olivia Rossetti Agresti (sister)

Helen Maria Madox Rossetti Angeli (10 November 1879[1][2] – 11 September 1969)[3] was a British-born Italian writer,[4] translator,[5] and biographer.[6][2]

Personal life

Helen Maria Madox Rossetti[7] was born in 1879, the second daughter of William Michael Rossetti and Lucy Madox Brown.[1][6] She was said to be the "most artistic" of the couple's children, with her father recalling that from "her earliest years she showed a certain unmistakable aptitude for sketching and painting".[6][8]

She married the Italian Gastone Angeli in Naples on 10 December 1903, afterwards travelling with him to Cairo, where he was employed in the Italian Chamber of Commerce.[6][9][8] Already in ill health when they married, Gastone Angeli died on 18 July 1904.[6] Their daughter, Imogene Lucy, was born in Rome on 15 September.[6] Soon after, Helen and the baby returned to London to live with William Michael Rossetti.[6]

Helen Rossetti Angeli died in Oxford on 11 September 1969, aged 89.[3][6]

Writing

The Rossetti children were drawn to anarchism while in their early teens, and in 1891 with her sister, Olivia Rossetti Agresti, Helen founded and edited anarchist journal The Torch (1891–1896).[10][11] Historian Pietro di Paola has described the journal as "both an archetypal anarchist publication in formal terms, and a high-quality publication ranking among the most original and stimulating of the prolific anarchist movement in its golden age".[11] In 1903, the sisters wrote and published A Girl Among the Anarchists in 1903, using the name Isabel Meredith.[6] This was, wrote their father, "with fancy-names and some modification of details, a genuine account of their experiences".[8][6]

In 1902, Helen Rossetti published a monograph on Dante Gabriel Rosseti, which formed the Easter Annual of The Art Journal.[8][12]

In 1949, Angeli published Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Friends and Enemies, described by The Sphere as a "full-blooded, whole-hearted defence of a poet and painter who has been much discussed and, it would seem, much maligned since his death".[13] Vernon Fane wrote that her intimate knowledge and "animated spirit" made the biography "something beyond the cut-and-dried "life" that it might have been from another pen."[13]

In 1954, Angeli wrote Pre-Raphaelite Twilight, a biography of Charles Augustus Howell, based on letters and manuscripts she had preserved.[2]

Bibliography

  • Ford Madox Brown (De La More Press, 1902)
  • The Life and Work of Daniel Gabriel Rossetti (The Art Journal, 1902)[12]
  • A Girl Among the Anarchists, with Olivia Rossetti (Duckworth & Co., 1903)
  • The Age of Shakespeare (Chatto & Windus, 1908)
  • Shelley and his Friends in Italy (Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1911)
  • Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Friends and Enemies (Hamish Hamilton, 1949)
  • Pre-Raphaelite Twilight (Richards Press, 1954)

References

  1. ^ a b Thirlwell, Angela (2004-09-23). Rossetti, William Michael (1829–1919), art critic and literary editor. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/35841.
  2. ^ a b c "Mrs Helen Angeli". The Times. 15 September 1969. p. 10.
  3. ^ a b "England & Wales Government Probate Death Index 1858-2019". Findmypast. 1970. Retrieved 2026-03-01.
  4. ^ "Helen Rossetti Angeli | Artist | Royal Academy of Arts". www.royalacademy.org.uk. Archived from the original on 2024-07-31. Retrieved 2026-02-24.
  5. ^ Pound, Ezra (1998). I cease not to yowl : Ezra Pound's letters to Olivia Rossetti Agresti. Internet Archive. Urbana : University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-02410-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Thirlwell, Angela (2003). William and Lucy: the Other Rossettis. Internet Archive. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-10200-0.
  7. ^ "Rossetti Bequests". Sheffield Daily Telegraph. 11 April 1919. p. 2.
  8. ^ a b c d Rossetti, William Michael (1906). Some Reminiscences of William Michael Rossetti. Vol. 2. C. Scribner's Sons.
  9. ^ "Marriages Abroad, A-F". Findmypast. 1903. Retrieved 2026-03-01.
  10. ^ "Olivia Rossetti | Orlando". orlando.cambridge.org. Retrieved 2026-03-01.
  11. ^ a b "A transnational anarchist newspaper: The Torch (1891-96) – The Nineteenth-Century Research Cluster". c19group.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk. Retrieved 2026-03-01.
  12. ^ a b "Dante Gabriel Rossetti". St James's Gazette. 25 March 1902. p. 24.
  13. ^ a b Fane, Vernon (7 May 1949). "The World of Books". The Sphere. p. 32.
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