Raleigh's Cell in the Tower Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 1881
sonnet <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>The sonnet eulogizes Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), the extraordinary explorer, politician, and poet who was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. After her death in 1603, the new king James had Raleigh imprisoned in the Tower on suspicion of treason. There he wrote his <xref doc="a."> <title level="wrk"> <hi rend="i">History of the World</hi> , published in 1614 in five volumes. The history only carried forward to approximately 130 b.c.

Textual History: Composition

The date of the sonnet's composition is not known. WMR in his bibliography of 1906 stated that it was composed “Before Autumn 1881”. I judge that it was probably written between January and May 1881, and perhaps in February-March, when DGR was quite involved in discussions with Caine about his own contributions to Caine's volume of sonnets.

The only known autograph manuscripts are the two copies in the library of the Delaware Art Museum, the pencil draft and the corrected copy in ink. A fair copy made by John Schott is also preserved in that library.

Textual History: Revision

Production History

Reception

Iconographic

Printing History

First printed in February 1882 in T. Hall Caine's edition of <hi rend="i">Sonnets of Three Centuries</hi> (1882) DGR did not reprint it in either of the the 1881 volumes. WMR collected it in his first 1886 edition and kept it in the collected editions that followed.

Pictorial

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

<hi rend="i">Sonnets of Three Centuries</hi> text Raleigh made and/or funded various colonizing excursions to the New World between 1582-1603. He was responsible as well for the construction in 1587 of the “Ark Royal”, which was the flagship of the English fleet that sailed against the Spanish Armada in 1588.
<hi rend="i">Sonnets of Three Centuries</hi> text The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, vol. 1 (1886) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1886 0 Raleigh's Cell in the Tower DGR 1881 0 Raleigh's Cell in the Tower (Delaware corrected copy DGR 1881 0 Raleigh's Cell in the Tower (Schott fair copy) DGR 1881 0 Small Notebook 4 (British Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1879-1880 0 Sonnets of Three Centuries T. Hall Caine 1882 0 The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1911 0