Dante Gabriel Rossetti illustration was "The Maids of Elfen-Mere" (1855), for a poem by his friend William Allingham, and he contributed two illustrations to Edward Moxon's 1857 edition of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Poems" and illustrations for works by his sister Christina Rossetti. His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Neither Burne-Jones nor Morris knew Rossetti, but were much influenced by his works, and met him by recruiting him as a contributor to their "Oxford and Cambridge Magazine" which Morris founded in 1856 to promote his ideas about art and poetry. In February 1857, Rossetti wrote
Dante Gabriel Rossetti illustrations of the Pre-Raphaelites were personal and intellectual readings of the poems to which they belonged, not merely echoes in line of the words of the text.” The Pre-Raphaelites’ visualization of Tennyson’s poems indicated the range of possibilities in interpreting written works, as did their unique approach to visualizing narrative on the canvas. Pre-Raphaelite illustrations do not simply refer to the text in which they appear; rather, they are part of a bigger program of art: the book as a whole. Rossetti’s philosophy about the role of illustration was revealed in an 1855 letter to poet William Allingham, when he