The Germ: Thoughts Towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art

The single issue of a journal that launched one of art history's most rebellious movements. Published in 1850, "The Germ" was the voice of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a circle of young artists and writers who rejected the academic art establishment and vowed to return to nature, truth, and individual expression. Here, in embryonic form, are the earliest published works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, and even Christina Rossetti. The journal pulses with a fierce artistic manifesto: painting must be truthful, poetry must feel authentic, and creation must stem from direct observation of the natural world. Though it failed commercially and most copies were destroyed, it planted seeds that would blossom into a movement that transformed Victorian art and literature. This is the document of young artists on the verge of changing everything.