Book excerpt: The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of nineteenth-century artists who challenged contemporary art with their commitment to realism and 'truth to nature'. Renowned as much for their social relationships as for their artistic ideals, the lives of the Pre-Raphaelites - Holman Hunt, Rossetti, Millais, Burne-Jones and Morris - illustrate the full range of human experience, from personal tragedy to triumph. Jan Marsh explores both the individual personalities and the artistic force which bound the circle together.