Farewell to the Glen Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 1869
abbaabbacdcdcd iambic pentameter sonnet
<author/> <city/> <publisher/> <date/> <pages/> </bibl> <note/> </citnliterary> <citntranslationoriginal> <bibl> <title/> <author/> <city/> <publisher/> <date/> <pages/> </bibl> <note/> </citntranslationoriginal> <citnpictorial> <title/> <artist/> <location/> <bibl> <title/> <author/> <city/> <publisher/> <date/> <pages/> </bibl> <note/> </citnpictorial> <citnmythic> <name/> <culture/> <bibl> <title/> <author/> <city/> <publisher/> <date/> <pages/> </bibl> <note/> </citnmythic> <citnhistorical> <event/> <place/> <date/> <bibl> <title/> <author/> <city/> <publisher/> <date/> <pages/> </bibl> <note/> </citnhistorical> <citnautobiographical> <name/> <place/> <date/> <bibl> <title/> <author/> <city/> <publisher/> <date/> <pages/> </bibl> <note/> </citnautobiographical> <citnscenic> <place/> <date/> <bibl> <title/> <author/> <city/> <publisher/> <date/> <pages/> </bibl> <note/> </citnscenic> </listcitn> </source> <commentaries> <head>Commentary</head> <section type="intro"> <head>Introduction</head> <p>As Baum notes, the sonnet is not one of DGR's best works considered simply as an artistic performance. Its diction is stiff and formal in the octave, and the rhetorical simplicity only further weakens the effect. On the substantive side, the sonnet is no more interesting. The secretive handling of what appear to be personal matters is unimpressive even as an index of a neurotic state of mind.</p> </section> <section type="texthistcomp"> <head>Textual History: Composition</head> <p> <cit>DGR to Alicia Losh, 19 October 1869 (see <bibl> <author>Fredeman</author>, <xref doc="a."> <title level="bk"> <hi rend="i">Correspondence</hi> , I69. 186 ): “The ‘Farewell to the Glen’ . . . I wrote the day before I left Penkill” (i.e., 17 September 1869). Sharp dates it a week later. Only one manuscript is extant: the corrected copy in the Fitzwilliam composite “House of Life” sequence.

Textual History: Revision

The initially printed text in the First Trial Book does not change in any later printing.

Production History

Reception

Iconographic

Printing History

First printed at the beginning of October 1869 in the First Trial Book for the 1870 volume of <xref doc="a.1-1870.raw" workcode="16-1869">Poems</xref> . It was eventually published in the <xref doc="a.1-1870.raw" workcode="16-1869">Sonnets for Pictures, and Other Sonnets</xref> section of the volume. In 1881 DGR printed it as sonnet LXXXIV in <xref doc="a.22-1881.raw" workcode="16-1869">The House of Life</xref> sequence in his <xref doc="a.2-1881.1stedn.rad" workcode="16-1869">Ballads and Sonnets</xref> volume.

Pictorial

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Like <xref doc="a.21-1869.raw">“The Stream's Secret”</xref> , this poem was written “in a little cave by the side of the rushing Penwhapple, the little stream in the glen” on the grounds of Penkill Castle (see Doughty, <hi rend="i">A Victorian Romantic</hi> , 408 ). To Alicia Losh DGR wrote in his letter of 19 )ctober 1869 “On reading it over at home I thought it very dismal but still it would have been a pity to exclude it” from the 1870 <hi rend="i">Poems</hi> volume. Doughty speculates on DGR's psychological condition when he wrote the sonnet, but the sonnet's rhetoric is oblique and elusive.

Bibliographic

Baum, ed., <hi rend="i">The House of Life</hi> , 195-196 Doughty, <hi rend="i">A Victorian Romantic</hi> , 412 WMR, <hi rend="i">DGR as Designer and Writer</hi> , 245-246 Sharp, <hi rend="i">DGR: A Record and a Study</hi> , 27, 429

Poems (1870) Text bitterer: see <xref doc="a.3-1867.s78.raw">“The Passover in the Holy Family”</xref> line 14, where the word “bitter” has a prefigurative usage in DGR's secret autobiographical poetic symbology. shade: as so often in DGR, this word carries ambiguous overtones. It refers literally to the “shade” in the glen at Penkill, but it also glances at the ghost of his wife. The meaning of this ominous line is left unexplained. See Doughty, <hi rend="i">A Victorian Romantic</hi> (412 ) for his speculations on possible personal meanings. Poems (1870) Text Poems (1870): Proofs for first edition, British Library copy, (Ashley 1405) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1870 March 1-7 0 Poems (1870): Proofs for first edition, Fitzwilliam Museum (Copy 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1870 March 1 (and 22 March for additional material) 0 Poems (1870): Proofs for first edition, Princeton/Troxell Copy Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1870 March 1-7 0 Poems (1870): Mixed Proofs 1869-1870, Fitzwilliam Museum Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1869 October - 1970 March 0 Poems (1870): First Edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1870 April 26 0 Poems (1870): Second Edition (DGR's corrected copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1870 May 0 Poems (1870): Second Edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1870 May 0 Poems (1870): Third Edition (copy 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1870 June 0 Poems (1870): Third Edition (copy 2) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1870 June 0 Poems (1870): Fourth Edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1870 July (or early August) 0 Poems (1870): Fifth Edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871 0 Poems (1870): Sixth Edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1872 0 Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1873): the Tauchnitz Edition 1873 November 15 (late November or early December) 0 Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1873): the Tauchnitz Edition, with author's corrections (Yale copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1873 November 15 (late November or early December) 0 Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1873): the Tauchnitz Edition, page proofs with author's corrections Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1873 November (early November) 0 Poems. (Privately Printed).: First Trial Book, British Library copy (Ashley 1393) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1869 October 3 0 Poems. (Privately Printed).: First Trial Book (Fitzwilliam Museum copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1869 October 3 0 Poems. (Privately Printed).: First Trial Book, Princeton/Troxell (Losh copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1869 October 3 0 Poems. (Privately Printed.): First Trial Book (partial), Princeton/Troxell (copy 1) 1869 October 3 0 Poems. (Privately Printed.): Second Trial Book, British Library, (Ashley 1400) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1869 November 30 (25 November - 6 December) 0 Poems. (Privately Printed).: Second Trial Book (Fitzwilliam Museum copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1869 November 25 0 Poems, Privately Printed: Second Trial Book, Alice Boyd/Lasner copy. Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1869 November 25 0 Poems. (Privately Printed.): Proofs for the Second Trial Book (partial), Princeton/Troxell. Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1869 November 25-26 0 Poems. (Privately Printed.): Second Trial Book, Princeton/Troxell. Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1869 November 25 0 Poems. (Privately Printed.): Second Trial Book (partial), author's working copy, Princeton/Troxell. Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1869 November 25 0 The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, vol. 1 (1886) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1886 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), first edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 October 17 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), second edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1882), fourth edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1882 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), (author's proofs, British Library copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 April-June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature R (Delaware Museum, first author's proof) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 5 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature R (Delaware Museum, first revise, copy 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 9 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature R (Beinecke Library, first revise, author's copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 9 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature R (Delaware Museum, first revise, copy 2) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 9 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature R (Delaware Museum, second revise) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 10 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature R (Delaware Museum, third revise, uncorrected copy 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti May 1881 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature R (Delaware Museum, third revise, uncorrected copy 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 (circa) 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature R (Delaware Museum, third revise, uncorrected copy 2) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 (circa) 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature R (Delaware Museum, third revise, uncut proof sheets) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 (circa) 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature R (Delaware Museum, final proof) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 27 0 The House of Life (composite manuscript posthumously arranged, Fitzwilliam Museum) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1845 - 1881 0 The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1911 0