Rossetti, Gabriele, an Italian poet and critic; born in Vasto, Abruzzo Citeriore, then forming part of the Kingdom of Naples, Feb. 28, 1783. When King Ferdinand abrogated the constitution in 1821, the Constitutionalists were proscribed and persecuted, Rossetti among them. Rossetti made his escape from Naples with the kindly connivance of the British admiral, Sir Graham Moore, who shipped him off to Malta in the guise of a British naval officer. In Malta he was treated with great liberality and distinction by the governor, and toward 1824 he went to London, with good recommendations, to follow the career of teacher of Italian, and follow his favorite studies.
In 1826 he married Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori, daughter of a Tuscan father and English mother; soon afterward he was elected Professor of Italian in King's College, London. In London Rossetti lived a studious, laborious, and honorable life, greatly respected by his pupils and by Italian residents and visitors. His health began to fail in 1842, and his sight became dim, one eye being wholly lost. After some attacks of a paralytic nature he died in London, April 26, 1854. His son, Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, gained high reputation as poet and painter, and his daughter, Christina Georgina, born in 1830, also wrote poetry of a high order.
Entry from Everybody's Cyclopedia,
1912.