Asset Details
Do you wish to reserve the book?
Victorian Secrets
Hey, we have placed the reservation for you!
By the way, why not check out events that you can attend while you pick your title.
Oops! Something went wrong.
Looks like we were not able to place the reservation. Kindly try again later.
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
Victorian Secrets
Do you wish to request the book?
Victorian Secrets
Please be aware that the book you have requested cannot be checked out. If you would like to checkout this book, you can reserve another copy
We have requested the book for you!
Your request is successful and it will be processed during the Library working hours. Please check the status of your request in My Requests.
Oops! Something went wrong.
Looks like we were not able to place your request. Kindly try again later.
Newspaper Article
Victorian Secrets
2005
Overview
A friend and colleague of [Dante Gabriel Rossetti]'s, the artist [Edward Burne-Jones] also bent his knee at Beauty's altar, embarking upon several long-term, obsessive relationships, and at least one full-blown affair, with the women who modeled for him. Burne-Jones -- arguably a better painter than Rossetti, and certainly a more sympathetic person -- is at the center of Josceline Dimbleby's fine, emotionally detailed May and [Amy, Hal]: A True Story of Family, Forbidden Love, and the Secret Lives of May Gaskell, Her Daughter Amy, and Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Over the decades, Burne-Jones had a series of passionate crushes on soulful young women. May Gaskell was not the first of these, nor was she the model for his greatest paintings. That distinction goes to Maria Cassavetti Zambaco, a beautiful young Greek woman and artist, with whom the married Burne-Jones had an affair, and whose delicate, haunted features he immortalized in paintings such as \"The Beguiling of Merlin.\" Their affair reached its melodramatic climax in 1869, when Zambaco, brandishing a vial of laudanum, vainly tried to enlist her lover in a double suicide pact on the banks of the Regent's Canal. When the horrified Burne-Jones refused, Zambaco threatened to throw herself into the water. The ensuing hubbub alerted neighbors, including [Robert Browning] and Elizabeth Browning, who summoned the police. (The high-strung Burne-Jones fainted.) Burne-Jones seems to have avoided any more sexual entanglements, but he continued to rely heavily upon intense romantic friendships for creative inspiration. One such friendship was with May Gaskell, who in 1892 met him at a party at the painter's home. Burne-Jones was 59, Gaskell two decades younger. The daughter of a petite Irish beauty and a brilliant cleric, at 20 May had married Capt. Henry Gaskell, described by Dimbleby as \"a keen gardener as well as a soldier.\" Any frequent viewer of \"Masterpiece Theater\"-style English dramas might well take those words as a subtle warning.
Publisher
WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post
