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FIRST EDITION, wood engraved frontispiece and additional title-page from designs by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, light foxing to half-title, and at head of final few pages, pp. viii, 216, foolscap 8vo, original dark green cloth by Burn (his ticket to rear pastedown) with an overall design stamped in gilt incorporating lettering to the backstrip, lightly rubbed to extremities with a hint of fraying at head of upper joint, very good. Inscribed by the illustrator, the poet's brother, on the half-title: 'To Charles A Howell, From his affectionate friend, D.G. Rossetti, 1866'. Charles Augustus Howell (1840-1890) was one of the most notorious figures of his day, thinly fictionalised and roundly vilified by Arthur Conan Doyle in his story 'The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton', where he was damned 'the worst man in London'. Burne-Jones called him 'a base, treacherous, unscrupulous and malignant fellow', and Swinburne labelled Howell 'the vilest wretch I ever came across'. Swinburne, like Ruskin, was one of those who had for a time been seduced by the abundant charm and nous of this art dealer and alleged blackmailer. He was an agent to both, and whilst in their favour was utterly in their confidence, a position he seems never to have failed to abuse. Whistler was another who admired, and harnessed, Howell's flamboyant approach to business and life, before gaining an insight into his chicanery. But no-one came under his sway, or suffered from his machinations, more sharply than Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti painted Howell's portrait, and the latter was for a time amongst the most intimate of the artist's circle. This inscription dates from those years; a few years later, Howell would provide the means of exhuming from Lizzie Siddal's grave the poems that Rossetti had buried with her - the act upon which a large part of his notoriety rests. Howell died in mysterious circumstances; he was found in Chelsea with his throat slit and a coin in his mouth, and letters from prominent persons were found in his home, which lead to increased speculation that he had been engaged in blackmail. (Ashley Library Vol.IV, p.100-1: Colbeck p.689: Fredeman 44.4: Tinker 1786). Seller Inventory # 65421
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