The earliest of the sonnets date from 1847-1848, the latest, 1881. DGR wrote them in three general periods: first, a group of early ones that came out in the ; second, a group from the mid to the late 1860s; and finally, a group that were written in the late 1870s and early 1880s.

DGR revised these works when he came to prepare them for their publication (in 1850, 1870, and 1881).

First published as a group in the no. 4 (30 April 1850). In the 1870 DGR gathered that earlier group together and augmented it with new sonnets “for pictures” as well as some other sonnets, and published the group as . In this volume contains a number of “sonnets for pictures”, though none of these is from the group. Nevertheless, DGR's decision to locate some sonnets for pictures in other locales began a process that would eventually disperse the integrity of the group altogether. In 1881 this integrity finally disappeared. The two 1881 volumes have their scattered throughout, with many incorporated into .

In his own pictures—the “double works” properly so called— DGR called attention to their textualities from the very earliest period of his work. When he exhibited (1849) he fixed one of its accompanying sonnets to the frame and printed the other in the Catalogue. His pictures regularly incorporate texts, even their correspondent texts, into the picture, or even more frequently on the frame of the picture. DGR's admiration for the work of medieval artists and miniaturists locates the source of his passion for textualizing pictures in various ways, and for pictorializing texts.

The “Sonnet for a Picture”, or poem for a picture, is a peculiarly Rossettian genre. Although he did not invent it, the form in his hands had an incalculable influence on its later proliferation. DGR's work comes directly out of the Gift Book and Annuals tradition which so dominated Victorian writing, especially short fiction and poetry, from 1820 to 1870. In those venues writers were continually called upon to produce poems or stories “for pictures” (in the most literal sense). DGR's work is a critical reflection upon that tradition, and a serious effort to develop a more than perfunctory relation between picture and its correspondent textual reimagination.

The preparation of a poem “for” a picture is in DGR's mind an action quite like translating a poem from one language to another. Ultimately the effort of producing such works of translation is a gnostic or neoplatonic project to produce signs that human discourse is One—a , as DGR called it in the sonnet of that title.

Ainsworth, ed., Barolsky, , 130-137 Bass, , chapter 8 Fredeman, , 55-74 Gregory, , II. 108-110 Hardinge, (1891), 433-443 Landow, , 247-265 Masefield, , 64-66 McGann, , Chapter 2 Sharp, , 394-399 Stein, , 19-23, 130-143, 159-169 ) Wagner, , 144-149