Vernon Lushington Thomas Hughes, and Richard Buckley Litchfield, became a unifying force at the College. He was a friend to artists, authors and activists, particularly those of The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts Movement who gravitated to the Working Men's College. In 1856, it was he who first introduced Edward Burne-Jones to Dante Gabriel Rossetti in his college rooms. Rossetti used Lushington’s wife, Jane, as a model in 1865. Lushington, friend of William Morris, was a frequent visitor to Kelmscott Manor. He was a close friend of Leslie Stephen and his family; Stephen’s daughter Virginia (later Woolf) based her character
Christina Rossetti an inspiration for Bear McCreary to write his musical composition "When I Am Dead" published in 2015. Two of Rossetti's poems, "Where Sunless Rivers Weep" and "Weeping Willow" were set to music by Barbara Arens in her "All Beautiful & Splendid Things: 12 + 1 Piano Songs on Poems by Women" (2017, Editions Musica Ferrum). On 1 December 2011, Rossetti was the subject of Radio 4's programme "In Our Time". Christina Rossetti Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems. She is famous for