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Saint Agnes of Intercession

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

First published May 1980
Type Short Fiction

<br> "Rossetti's 'Hand and Soul' (1849) and 'St. Agnes of Intercession' (1850) [sic] appeared in <i>The Germ</i>, the short-lived organ of the original Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Both stories show the young Rossetti's attempts to define the role of the painter, in characteristically supernatural terms. ..." (typography modified) --John Weeks, Introduction to the 1980 anthology, p. 12 (viewed at Google Books, snippet only)

  • An unfinished story which Rossetti wrote in several drafts from 1850-1860, but first published in the 1886 edition of his collected works.
  • 1849 or 1850 publication is sometimes reported; eg, in The Supernatural Index and in the 1980 anthology Introduction (below).
  • The story was finished for the fifth, May 1850 monthly issue of The Germ, according to William Michael Rossetti (brother of DGR, editor of the magazine). But there were only four issues, January to April. [The painter John Everett Millais (1829–1896), most famous of the Pre-Raphaelites in 1850, contributed nothing to the journal.] "This however was not Millais's fault, for he made an etching for a prose story by my brother (named An Autopsychology, or now St. Agnes of Intercession); and this etching, along with the story, had been expected to appear in a No. 5 of The Germ which never came out." --WMR, Introduction to the 1901 facsimile reprint of The Germ, pp. 13-14 (viewed as Project Gutenberg Ebook #17649)

Date Publication Publisher Type Page
May 1980 Cover The Dream Weavers: Short Stories by the Nineteenth-Century Pre-Raphaelite Poet-Painters Banquo Books / Woodbridge Press Anthology 31
July 2010 Cover The Dream Weavers: Tales of Fantasy by the Pre-Raphaelites Borgo Press / Wildside Press Anthology 31