Published in the year of the poet's death, Caine's volume was the first and
one of the most influential biographical treatments of DGR. Caine first
became acquainted with DGR in 1879, and thus the book deals only with the
last years of DGR's life. As Francis Fennell puts it,
“This book begins the tradition of viewing Rossetti as
a morbid recluse, largely because the author did not know his subject
during the subject's youth
” (45). Caine was
“a young builder's clerk from Liverpool with
journalistic ambitions
”, who in 1881
“had come to live with Rossetti as a kind of
attendant
” (
A Victorian Romantic
An Annotated Bibliography
I could not be much concerned about the unwillingness to give me a new sonnet which Rossetti at first exhibited, for I knew full well that sooner or later the sonnet would come. Not that I recognised in him the faintest scintillation of the affectation so common among authors as to the publication of work. But the fear of any appearance of collusion between himself and his critics was, as he said, a bugbear that constantly haunted him. Owing to this, a stranger often stood a better chance of securing his ready and open co-operation than the most intimate of friends. I frequently yielded to his desire that in anything that I might write his name should not be mentioned—too frequently by far, to my infinite vexation at the time, and now to my deep and ineradicable regret. The sonnet-book out of which arose much of the correspondence printed in this chapter, contains in its preface and notes hardly an allusion to him, and yet he was, in my judgment, out of all reach and sight, the greatest sonnet-writer of his time. The sonnet first sent was