This was Evelyn Waugh's first book, published when he was 25. It is an essential part of the Waughn canon, full of that vernal charm which animated his early travel books but which faded from the famous novels of his more savage maturity. Written when there was little general interest in the pre-Raphaelites, after an account of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's tragic and somewhat mysterious life, and provocative pictures of his contemporaries and friends, Waugh concludes dryly that, from many points of view, Rossetti was nothing but a melancholy old fraud. Waughn confesses that nothing in Rossetti's life prepares us for the transcendent beauty of Beata Beatrix, The Beloved and a few other works. This is a biography as outstanding as the art it portrays.