A Note on Rossetti's Foreign Transcriptions

The note is interesting for setting a date to the transcriptions that DGR made of foreign poetry in 1848, as part of his project that would eventuate in the publication of The Early Italian Poets . The note refers principally to the manuscript copies that DGR was making of various sonnets by Cecco Angiolieri, some of which he would not translate or publish. WMR's reference to the “translation of a French poem” is important in two respects. First, it references the interlinear pencil translation DGR made of a passage from the Roman de la Rose . Second, because WMR did not publish this translation until his edition of 1911, his note must have been made sometime near that date.

The manuscript is among a cache of materials originally in the possession of WMR and after that of John Robert Wahl. They finally passed into the library of the South African National Gallery.