The BBC TV series Desperate Romantics is a dramatisation of the art movement founded by 19th Century artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais and featuring characters such as art critic John Ruskin.

Richard Josey was a prominent reproductive engraver in Victorian London. Though he was younger than the Pre-Raphaelites, he became known to them possibly through a connection with Algernon Graves (son of Henry Graves, printseller) and John Ruskin, the famous critic. Josey’s reputation led to him being commissioned by Sir John Everett Millais PRA to engrave Millais’ The Earl of Shaftesbury.