Hair-mad Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s obsession with redheads

This year’s redhead king and queen, Alan Reidy and Grainne Keena are crowned at the Irish Redhead Convention. Reader Alan Shelston is reminded of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s obsession with flame-haired guests at a party recalled by Elizabeth Gaskell. Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Getty Images

There is a precedent for the Taylor Wessing portrait prize’s “obsession with red-haired young women” reported by your correspondent Norman Miller (Letters, 19 November). In a letter written in October 1859 Elizabeth Gaskell reported her experiences with Dante Gabriel Rossetti at two evening parties: “I think we got to know Rossetti pretty well … I had a good deal of talk with him, always excepting the times when ladies with beautiful hair came in … It did not signify what we were talking about or how agreeable I was; if a particular kind of reddish brown, crepe wavy hair came in, he was away in a moment struggling for an introduction to the owner of said head of hair. He is not as mad as a March hare, but hair-mad.”

Nothing changes.
Alan Shelston
Bowdon, Greater Manchester

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