The Staff and Scrip (corrected holograph, Humanities Research Center, U. of Texas)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Production Description
Document Title: The Staff & Scrip (derived from the “Gesta Romanorum”)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of composition: 1851-1852, 1856
Type of Manuscript: draft holograph manuscript
Collation: 16 pages
Note: leaves numbered 1-6, 10 at upper left with the first leaf being a
sheet folded into four pages
Scribe: DGR
Corrector: DGR
Provenance
Current Location: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, U. of Texas
Physical Description
Paper: 7 1/16 x 4 3/8 in. unlined notebook paper
Other Physical Features: one leaf is 7 3/8 x 4 3/8 in.
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Copyright: © Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas
at Austin.
page images | transcript
Scholarly Commentary
Introduction
This is a composite draft manuscript. Pages 1-6 represent DGR's first version of the poem as he composed it in 1851-52. Page 10 is a later addition, drafted in 1856. The heavy cancellations and other changes in pages 1-6 also date from 1856 when he took up his earlier manuscript and revised it for publication in the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (December issue).
The Humanities Research Center has another manuscript , a corrected fair copy, with pages numbered 7-9. This text was so numbered to indicate its relation to the draft manuscript, from which the fair copy was made (it is a partial copy of the beginning stanzas of the first version of the poem).
A holograph copy of one of DGR's translations from Folgore da San Geminiano, Friday. The Day of Hunting, appears on the last manuscript page (where it is subtitled “The Day of the Chase”).