The remarkable set of drawings illustrates Poe's
That Poe should have been the occasion for this artistic change is both interesting and somewhat remarkable, for Poe is a key figure in the development of DGR's literary style as well. The second-order romanticism developed in Poe's imaginative writings, and explicated in essays like “
DGR also made illustrations for two other Poe works,
The earliest of these illustrations was
executed in June 1846, a
The illustrations are keyed to several passages of Poe's poem, but each drawing is an effort to render the central conception of the poem in general, as DGR read it. The haunting is therefore, in DGR's version, not simply through the spirit of Lenore, but through the imaginative construction of that spirit: hence the presence, in DGR's drawings (but not in Poe's poem) of the “portrait” of Lenore on the wall.
DGR's annotated copy of Poe's The Raven and Other Poems
Apollo
DGR: An Illustrated Memorial
The Pre–Raphaelites , Tate 1984
A Catalogue Raisonné