Good question ...

... Did Rossetti really need to exhume his wife? | TLS.

Today, Rossetti is best known as a painter, but at his death in 1882 his poetic reputation stood higher, thanks to the volume, Poems (1870), that was published after the exhumation. From his youth, he had precocious and parallel talents. His first published verses, My Sister’s Sleep, antedated his exhibition debut with “The Girlhood of Mary Virgin”, while in 1850 his well-known poem “The Blessed Damozel” roughly coincided with his second painting, “Ecce Ancilla Domini”. The formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood at the end of 1848 was followed by the establishment of the PRB magazine The Germ, with comparable ambitions to challenge existing standards; both came about thanks to Rossetti’s energy.