The letters and papers which follow are unusual in several respects, and this will emerge in the course of this volume. The diary of George Price Boyce, friend of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Ruskin, and a familiar figure in artistic circles in the mid-nineteenth century, has been known to scholars since the publication of excerpts from it by the Old Watercolour Society in 1941. The discovery, in the 1990s, of the letters of his sister Joanna and of Henry Wells, who was first George's friend and then his brother-in-law, led to an account by Sue Bradbury which not only drew extensively on these ‘Boyce papers’, but told the dramatic story of Joanna and Henry's courtship and marriage. Joanna, George and Henry: A Pre-Raphaelite Tale of Art, Love and Friendship was published in 2012. The protagonists were my great-great grandparents, and the papers remain with the family. They are in a form that presents considerable editorial challenges, and are difficult to use in their surviving state. It seemed appropriate to make available the whole body of the letters and diaries, with suitable annotations, for the extensive light that they shed on artistic life in London and Paris in the 1850s, and for the intrinsic interest of the letters themselves, sharp and stylish, which build a portrait of the three artists. Joanna in particular was a remarkable artist and writer of powerful criticism, praised both for her pictures and her articles in the Saturday Review.

A companion volume is in preparation which will build on the themes that emerge from the present publication. This will address the lives and artistic careers of all three artists in their historical and cultural context. The essays will explore art historical topics including Academic painting, watercolour practices, Pre-Raphaelite landscape painting and modernity and representation, technical developments and artistic training. Equally, The Boyce Papers contain a great deal of interest to students and scholars concerned with a range of topics in the Victorian era, including literature, music, theatre, life writing, the history of death, mourning and memory, and medical and pseudo-medical practices.