A Year Later: The Dove Upon Her Branch
It’s been just over a year since my fourth novel The Dove Upon Her Branch, A Novel Portrait of Christina Rossetti was published.
I heartfeltly thank those who have purchased the novel in one of its formats (paperback, e-book, and audiobook) and those who have taken the time to write and post a review.
There seemed to be a lot of excitement around the novel’s release, and I was optimistic for its reception, certainly that it would reach out as much if not more than had been the case for my previous three novels.
I probably shouldn’t, but will, express my disappointment that I haven’t heard more from readers, whether in the form of reviews or just letting me know what they thought of the novel.
The Pre-Raphaelite Society
has been very supportive and generous,
allowing me a full-page ad (above) in the 2024 Spring Issue of
The PRS Review
Also, I had an hour-long discussion with Ester on
The Pre-Raphaelite Podcast.
You can link to listen here.
A review of the novel is set to appear in The PRS Review 2024 Summer Issue, which will be out soon. I’m hopeful it will encourage more readers in the Pre-Raphaelite Society’s demographic and beyond.
Here’s a summary followed by some snippets of reviews, as well as links to purchase.
“How many children could say their home hosted the humblest and highest at the same time, on any given evening invaded by expatriates their father never hesitated to invite in? Through the back door he welcomed a bookseller, organ grinder, biscuit maker, vagrant macaroni man, and one called Galli who thought he was Christ. Through the front, disgraced Italian counts and generals made as officious entrances as a small house on Charlotte Street afforded.”
Christina Georgina Rossetti is the youngest of four siblings in a close-knit, creative Anglo-Italian family. A spirited child like her brother, Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in adolescence she struggles with being sickly and depressed. She emerges “a dove on a solitary branch,” realizing her voice through writing, most exceptionally poetry.
Her respectable Victorian life teeters on the edge of a bohemian one. London is Christina’s beginning and end, travels, possibilities and impossibilities for love and marriage, ambivalent ambition, piety, charity, illness, and bonds of blood, heart, and soul tell her story. Journeys through reflection and imagination create her legacy.
Review excerpts
The lively depictions of Christina’s family and friends are one of the huge pleasures of reading this book as we follow her life from childhood into young womanhood, middle age and death at 64. A complex character, we share Christina’s powerful and fluctuating emotions as she struggles with the idea of marriage; Dante Gabriel’s relationships with other women; her ambivalence towards the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; and doubts about the worth of her own poetry. ~ D. Bennison, Bennison Books
The fine tapestry of words in The Dove Upon Her Branch evokes a life lived more in the shadows than the light, but also reveals Christina Rosetti’s verve and certainty of talent. ~ Mary Clark, poet, author
The author doesn’t disappoint with her latest.
I read with enjoyment because I am sure it was enjoyably written for it flows with a writer’s passion for her subject. It is a breath of bookish history written as if for a stage “in bringing a story and themes, characters, their thoughts and emotions alive”. ~ Martin Shone, poet, author
What made the novel important to me, however, was the amazing amount of detail about the Rossetti household and the milieu in which the family lived that Denton conjures, partially from research and partially from her imagination.
I think there is always value at examining the lives of people like Christina Rossetti to see what the wellsprings of extraordinary creativity truly are. Christina Rosetti’s poetry, especially her children’s poems, still represent some of the most extraordinary poetry ever written by an English poet. But there is also value in understanding the context of a time through the details of the lives lived during that time. I am just glad that I have read Denton’s latest novel. ~ Thomas Davis, poet, author
This is a fictionalized account of the poet’s life and her family. More than that, Ms. Denton has woven Rossetti’s own words into the tale in such a way as to bring her words to life and give them new meaning. Beyond that, the author’s own language flow and word choices resonate beautifully with what we know of Christina Rossetti’s own use of language. All in all, this is a brilliant work. ~ Kenneth Weene, poet, author
Still famous today are the rambunctious poet-painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his sister Christina (1830-1894), whose poetry and prose has been rediscovered and praised since the rise of feminist criticism in the 1970s, and who is the subject of Denton’s new biographical novel.
Christina’s life was much more staid than her brother’s. A staunch Anglo-Catholic, she never married, and the bulk of her work is devotional. Denton’s novel carries her from childhood to early old age, weaving snippets of her poetry into the prose text, but generally without the verse divisions, as though it were Christina’s thoughts—which of course it is. ~ The Historical Novel Society
Available at Amazon worldwideSigned copies available
directly from meThank you
for your interest and support!
©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.
