Boulogne to Amiens and Paris Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 1849 September 28
blank verse iambic pentameter epistle
<artist/> <location/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnpictorial> <citnmythic> <name/> <culture/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnmythic> <citnhistorical> <event/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnhistorical> <citnautobiographical> <name/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnautobiographical> <citnscenic> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnscenic> </listcitn> </source> <commentaries> <head>Commentary</head> <section type="intro"> <head>Introduction</head> <p>This is one of the most significant of the poems in DGR's 1849 sequence <xref doc="a.54-1849.raw"> <title level="wrk">“A Trip to Paris and Belgium” . It comes in as the fourth poem in DGR's letter to his brother of 27-29 September 1849, the first letter he sent back to England from his Pre-Raphaelite trip to Paris and Belgium with Holman Hunt.

When DGR calls his travel notebook (lines 47-48) an “Émissaire de la perfide”, the remark must be taken as completely ironical since the authorities would scarcely find anything explicitly political, least of all subversive, in DGR's travel notes. Yet from DGR's point of view, his personal and aesthetic stance toward his trip is subversive exactly because it casts a cold eye on the public sphere and what he saw as its futile, even hypocritical, agents.

Textual History: Composition

Composed as part of a verse epistle to WMR of 29 September 1849 (see below).

Textual History: Revision

Production History

Reception

Iconographic

Printing History

First printed in the 1886 collected edition from the manuscript letter that WMR later published in <hi rend="i">Family Letters</hi> , 58-59. The poem was re-gathered into the sequence of travel poems constructed by WMR in his posthumous editions, culminating in the edition of 1911.

Pictorial

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

Manuscript Letter green: the text is (incorrectly) “grey” in all the printed editions. A printed errata slip in Pater's copy corrects the line. relayed: the text is (incorrectly) “delayed” in the 1886 edition, but it is corrected in later printings of 1886 and subsequent editions. The printed errata slip in Pater's copy corrects the line. Manuscript Letter The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, vol. 1 (1886) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1886 0 Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 27-29 September 1849 DGR 1849 September 27-29 0 The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1911 0 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His Family-Letters with a Memoir (Volume Two) William Michael Rossetti 1970 0