Historical, Biographical, and Literary Fiction / Essays / Poetry / Reviews /Book Cover and Interior Illustrations / Pet Portraits and Other Commissioned Artwork
The excellent and experienced narrator is Virgina Ferguson. My publisher and I are thrilled with the result and feel so fortunate to have attracted her talent to the audio version. I listened to it in its entirety, so engaged with Virginia’s reading I often forgot I was the author. She makes it so much more than just a spoken version of written words, bringing the novel’s characters, settings, events, reflections, and emotions to life.
If you have read The Dove Upon Her Branch or plan to do so, ratings and reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, along with recommending to other readers, greatly aides my promotional efforts.
A heartfelt thank you to those who have already rated and reviewed and helped to spread the word about it.
The PRS Review goes out to its worldwide members digitally and in print.
Coming up this summer will be The Pre-Raphaelite Podcast interview I did with the lovely Ester Diaz Morillo, and in the summer issue, a review of The Dove Upon Her Branch, A Novel Portrait of Christina Rossetti.
Needless to say, I’m hoping – ing – these promotions will gain more exposure, readers, and reviewers for the novel.
Any day now, The Dove Upon Her Branch will be available in its Audible version, wonderfully narrated by Virgina Ferguson, experienced Audible reader. She brought the novel to life for me, its author.
I thoroughly recommend it!
The novel is, of course, available in print and for Kindle devices and app.
All are welcome to join the next free online book club on Zoom on Tuesday February 27, 2024, where Without the Veil Between will be discussed along with “anything and everything Brontë and bookish!” Timing will be 7:30 – 9:00 in the UK (2:30 – 4:00 ET). I’m hoping to participate. Click here to register.
Since the fall of last year, I’ve had some lovely interactions with various administrators at The Pre-Raphaelite Society, which is the international society for the study of the lives and art of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their circle. All have been very welcoming and supportive of my latest novel The Dove Upon Her Branch, A Novel Portrait of Christina Rossetti, the result being that a full-page ad for the novel is in the works for the upcoming spring 2024 issue in the PRS magazine and a review by one of the society’s team will appear in the summer 2024 issue.
“Women Reading in Garden” by Marie Spartali Stillman
The other opportunity the PRS offered me was to participate in the Pre-Raphaelite Society Podcast to talk about The Dove Upon Her Branch, my motivation, inspiration, challenges, and other things related to my writing about Christina Rossetti. Despite being out of my comfort zone, it was an offer I couldn’t allow myself to refuse. The recording of my podcast with Ester, a lovely young Spanish woman who warmly led the conversation and put me at ease (perhaps, a little too much!), took place last Wednesday, Valentine’s Day. Watch this space for when it will air!
Other news is that The Dove Upon Her Branch, A Novel Portrait of Christina Rossetti is coming soon to Audible! A superb narrator is currently in the process of recording it. Again, watch this space for its release.
This means that all four of my novels will be available as audio books!
Here’s a recent review of The Dove Upon Her Branch by superb author of fiction, memoir, and poetry, Mary Clark. Please check out her website, Literary Eyes and publications at Goodreads and Amazon.
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.
Christina struggled with depression and had a penchant for the downbeat in her poems. Perhaps she meant to shock, at least to get the reader’s attention. She was a Rosetti, after all. Her poetry explored borderless areas on the edge of life, touched by death. She had an intuitive sense of human relationships and a feeling, or belief, that the divine is within our grasp.
Her brother Dante Gabriel Rosetti rocketed to fame, but this is Christina’s story, and she is always kept in the foreground of the reader’s consciousness. While she ostensibly accepted her time’s proscribed limits on women’s behavior, she also moved through the artistic world, posing for paintings, and giving critiques. Dante not only encouraged her writing but arranged for her poetry to be published, in a complex relationship between the two of competition and the desire to please, in fact, to be loved. Dante’s reckless courage in defiance of society taught her the downfall of that approach.
Within her family she was able to be safe, to be herself, and to keep a space where she could exercise her freedom. Several relationships with suitors died on the vine, no small part due to her own decisions. No judgments are made by the author, only hints that in Christina feelings of regret may have lingered along with knowledge that the decisions had their positive side. This may be one reason her work appealed to Virginia Woolf.
For the inner story of Christina Rosetti and exposure to her life’s work, I recommend Diane Denton’s The Dove Upon Her Branch. Read review on Goodreads and Amazon
Have you read the novel? If not, hope you will add it to your reading list. If you have read it, I hope you will consider posting a review and/rating.
And my last news for this post: I have begun a new novel, another biographical, historical fiction, this time about the early 20th century Shropshire novelist, poet, and essayist Mary Webb, most famous for her novels Gone to Earth and Precious Bane and Poems and Spring of Joy. Check out The Mary Webb Society for more about Mary and her writing.
December 19, 1848 was a tragic day at the Brontë Parsonage, Haworth, West Yorkshire, England, for Anne, Charlotte, and their father, Patrick, only a few months after brother Branwell met his inevitable end during which beloved sister Emily sickened beyond repair. One can only imagine the grief of losing two siblings and children so soon one after the other – not the first time this had happened for the Brontë family and not made easier by being just before Christmas, a time when the family usually found themselves come together from various endeavors that took them away from home.
I wrote about the closeness (“like twins … inseparable companions, and in the very closest sympathy, which never had any interruption” ~ Ellen Nussey) of Anne and Emily Brontë in a previous post: The Very Closest Sympathy.
Writing the scenes of Emily’s death in my novel Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit happened to correspond to a time (December 2016 – January 2017) when I was losing my beloved Gabey-kitty (his brother Darcy passed a few months later).
‘When we are harassed by sorrows or anxieties, or long oppressed by any powerful feelings which we must keep to ourselves, for which we can obtain and seek no sympathy from any living creature, and which yet we cannot, or will not wholly crush, we often naturally seek relief in poetry . . .’
~ Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey
Or, as in my case at the time, prose … well, poetic prose, for I needed the melancholy music of the words I was using to express the inexpressible.
“‘Powerful’. ‘Interesting’. ‘Coarse’. ‘Brutal’. ‘Morbid’. Do we write with any such adjectives in mind?” Anne had been reading through the reviews of Tenant she had collected, portions aloud to Emily, especially those that might stir any fight left in her. “Or go through the tormenting process of writing a novel for ‘reveling in scenes of debauchery’?”
Emily was quiet lying sideways on the sofa in the parlor. Since Anne had repositioned the pillow borrowed from one or other of their beds, Emily’s head had slipped to bow against her frail neck. Her torso was curled so her length was contracted, no definition to her arms or bosom within the sleeves and bodice of her dress, no movement under its skirt since Anne had lifted her sister’s skeletal legs up more than an hour before.
Anne wondered if Emily was still pulled by the brutishness and beauty of the moors and the similar punishment and reward of writing. Did a look out a window or opening of a door remind her of what she was missing, and new Gondal rascals or Heathcliffs or Catherines find her imagination receptive? Anne longed for one more conversation with her, whether playful or intense, one more chance to agree, argue and confirm they were good for each other’s inspiration, intellects and souls. Anne ached for one more meeting with the Emily who was wiry but robust, strong like a man and simple like a child, her head full of logic and fantastic stories at the same time, her choices uncompromising, as were her passions. If only Emily’s life could return to being routine and yet so exceptional, filled with writing brilliantly while she was bread making or sewing or everyone else was asleep, making music like a perfect lady and rambling the Pennine way like a free and easy lad.
Instead, Anne had to helplessly watch as Emily continued to disappear through those December days and nights. On that Monday evening, a week before Christmas, her stillness, half-open eyes and mouth, and leaning towards resignation indicated there was only one way she would be released from consumption’s captivity.
One of the illustrations I did for Without the Veil Between
Farewell by Anne Brontë
Farewell to thee! but not farewell To all my fondest thoughts of thee: Within my heart they still shall dwell; And they shall cheer and comfort me. O, beautiful, and full of grace! If thou hadst never met mine eye, I had not dreamed a living face Could fancied charms so far outvie.
If I may ne’er behold again That form and face so dear to me, Nor hear thy voice, still would I fain Preserve, for aye, their memory.
That voice, the magic of whose tone Can wake an echo in my breast, Creating feelings that, alone, Can make my tranced spirit blest.
That laughing eye, whose sunny beam My memory would not cherish less; — And oh, that smile! whose joyous gleam Nor mortal language can express.
Adieu, but let me cherish, still, The hope with which I cannot part. Contempt may wound, and coldness chill, But still it lingers in my heart.
And who can tell but Heaven, at last, May answer all my thousand prayers, And bid the future pay the past With joy for anguish, smiles for tears?
Available in Print, for Kindle devices and apps,
and as an Audio Book:
In 1853, just before Christina’s 23rd birthday, beloved Nonno, her 89-year-old maternal grandfather, Gaetano Polidori, suffered a stroke at his home in London. At the time, Christina was living in Frome, Somerset with her parents, helping her mother run a girls day school and take care of her ailing father. Needless to say, it was not one of her happiest birthdays.
Poetry stone in Frome, Somerset to note Christina Rossetti’s connection to the area.
The inscription reads:
Love lights the sun: love through the dark Lights the moon’s evanescent arc: Same Love lights up the glow-worms spark …
from What Good Shall my Life Do me? by Christina Rossetti
Fromefield’s peaking autumnal colors offered some consolation after Maria returned to London. November was dreary but also restorative, an adjustment and relief after months of visitors and daytrips. Once a week or every other Christina shopped in town. Nature walks were few and far between because of damp, chilly weather. As winter came before it officially did, Christina morphed into an interior creature, knowing it was time to hide away and exist on what was stored within. School was winding down for the Christmas holiday, which promised four weeks of aristocratic leisure. Teaching was almost rewarding at times, as she had never expected it would be, the few girls still at the school quite comfortable with each other and their teacher, Mama, relinquishing that role more and more to her youngest.
Christina finally had the opportunity to try out the new paint brushes William had sent along with Maria. Out of regret for complaining that two had split quills, she was determined to make good use of them—so far an inadequate portrait of Mama. Such a forgiving, if not forgetful, creature, William had given her a five-pound note for her birthday. She considered spending a few pounds on replacing worn items in her wardrobe, the remainder saved. When Mama returned, a trip to London might be considered good use of it, if after Boxing Day, at least to celebrate the New Year with her siblings. Another incentive was to show appreciation for Amelia’s gift of a pretty collar and sleeves by wearing them in her friend’s presence.
Christina intended them to complement a frock other than black or gray, her azure-blue conservatively contrasting the crisp white of the butterfly-themed guipure lace.
“I won’t stay until the twenty-fifth. Papa doesn’t want me to go at all, but there are things to be taken care of. Once they are, I’ll be back, and you can be on your way,” Mama said wearily while they waited on the platform for her train.
“I wish we could all live in London again.”
“We will, dearest,” Mama squeezed Christina’s hand, “before too long.”
How comforting it was to make plans in one’s head; in one’s heart, more foolish. A few days later Amelia’s present had gone from being impatiently draped over Christina’s vanity table mirror to storage in a deep drawer with a few other frivolous accessories.
*Because I’m located in the United States, Goodreads only allows me to run book giveaways to North American Goodreads members. Due to postage cost consideration, I’ve chosen to offer to US members only.
My apologies to those in Canada and overseas. I hope you will consider purchasing the novel, which is available worldwide in print and for Kindle devices and app.
“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.
“However, it is a work for only a small number of readers, those who are fans of Victorian poetry in general and the Rossetti family’s in particular. Hopefully, a college professor of Victorian poetry will discover this book and assign it to their students. Yes, there is a sense of elegance and style to be developed by reading The Dove Upon Her [Branch], and I applaud DM Denton for giving the world an inspired work if not one that is always accessible to the ordinary reader.”
A few days after Ken posted his review, I saw this meme and thought of his response and was even more pleased with it:
There is a memory here, planted moments before it was too late.
It’s not what it seems. These are not the spring variety, waking from frigid dreams, wooed by what is to come, green showing warily yet buds often opening too soon.
These are not flowers fraught with anticipation. They’ve already been revealed, lost their clothes in the crowd, withdrawn to regrow and regroup before winter. These latent lilies are a law unto themselves, having done it all before, bending this way and that, exploding unashamed into sunshine and tears, inviting their withering surroundings to dance before the mystery of dying.
For here is immortality. Everywhere. And so the generous age offered a handful of corms for drilling into years she might or might not have ahead, too deep to be forgotten.
Writing note: The autumn crocus actually isn’t a crocus—it’s in the lily family (crocuses are in the iris family), flowering in the fall. Autumn crocuses send up their leaves in the spring but they die back by summer, the flower stalks rising and blooming quite indecently in fall. Some common names are: naked ladies and mysteria. Mine were given me many years ago by an older neighbor friend of my late mom’s, a farmer’s widow, who was fiercely independent as well as extremely intelligent and artistic, living alone into her 80’s (no one knows for sure, as she would never tell her age…) in a large Frank Lloyd Wright style house where she had a very wild but wonderful perennial garden. Subsequent owners have dug it all up and replaced it too neatly with shrubs and lawns.
Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830 – 1894) is among the most important female poets of the 19th century. Presented here are fascinating facts about Christina Rossetti, the Victorian English poet whose work continues to resonate and inspire.
Her popular works, including “Goblin Market,” “Remember,” “In an Artist’s Studio,” “Who Has Seen the Wind,” and “In the Bleak Midwinter,” are a small part of her prolific output.
The American author Elbert Hubbard wrote in Christina Rossetti , “Christina had the faculty of seizing beautiful moments, exalted feelings, sublime emotions … In all her lines there is a half-sobbing tone.
ing – these promotions will gain more exposure, readers, and reviewers for the novel.
©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 - author- artist 