Delaware Museum digitizes Rossetti letters, Fanny Cornforth archive goes online

The Delaware Art Museum has digitized the correspondence between Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his muse Fanny Cornforth, making the letters publicly accessible online for the first time. The letters are part of the Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Pre-Raphaelite Manuscript Collection, donated to the museum in 1935. Fanny Cornforth, born Sarah Cox in 1835 in Steyning, England, met Rossetti at age 23 and became his model and lover. Her face appears in several iconic works including Bocca Baciata (1859), Aurelia (Fazio's Mistress) (1863-1873), and The Blue Bower (1865). After Rossetti's death, Cornforth died in 1909 in a psychiatric hospital at age 74 and was buried in a common grave in West Sussex. The museum's executive director Sam Sweet stated the institution receives over 250 research requests annually and the digitization expands global access. Separately, the "Remember Fanny" campaign by writer Emily Turner and biographer Kirsty Stonell-Walker is raising funds for a proper grave marker and bench.