Teaching Women's Art in America: Alice Donlevy's Designs for Christina Rossetti's Consider

In this essay, I show that Donlevy enacts her collaborative, feminist aesthetic by exploiting certain aspects of the contemporary publishing genres to which her design for the poem Consider and her book Practical Hints on the Art of Illumination belong: outlines for illumination and handbooks for illuminators. I argue that a contextualized examination of Donlevy's Consider reveals that she published it not only as a tribute to Rossetti, but as a demonstration of her own knowledge, talent, and authority. Writing as a teacher of illumination and as an emerging leader among those who sought to establish educational and professional opportunities for women artists, Donlevy incorporated and revised Rossetti's poem as well as the poetry of Adelaide Procter within Practical Hints as part of her effort to formulate a model and establish a collaborative artistic process for her readers. Donlevy's dual publications of Consider thus served in the context of a showcase for women's literary and artistic production, and as a special invitation to other women readers and artists to perpetuate Donlevy's artistic vision.