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
Life of William Blake by his widow Anne Gilchrist with help from Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Michael Rossetti. The book became the first standard text on the Blake, a foundation of the extensive scholarship on his life and work. The original 1863 edition was subtitled 'Pictor Ignotus', Latin for "unknown artist", a common phrase used for unattributed artworks. Here it refers to Blake's obscurity at the time. The phrase was taken from the recently published poem of that title by Robert Browning, part of which was used as an epigraph. A second edition was published in 1880, this included additional material and revisions