The House of Life

Dante Rossetti was born in 1828. He was an English translator, poet, painter and illustrator. Rossetti's poetry reflected the tragedies in his life beginning with the suicide of his wife after the death of their baby. He buried his poems with her but later had them exhumed and published. In later years he became addicted to drugs and fought with depression. The House of Life is a series of poems tracing the development of intimate relationships. Rossetti saw his poems as a series of mosaic moments which together formed a "monument" to the experience.