The Bride's Prelude (1881 slip proofs, Delaware Museum library)

The is an incomplete set of galley proofs, with authorial corrections, of the first proof of the poem (containing only 39 pages and 780 lines). It is the initial printing of the poem and the proof set that DGR retained. It served as copy text for the (complete) corrected set of slip proofs held in the Princeton-Taylor Collection, Princeton University library (which was also copy for the British Library set of the slip proofs ). DGR had these sets of galley proofs printed off in early May 1881 for eventual publication in the 1881 Poems. A New Edition (see DGR's letters to his publisher Ellis of 4 and 17 May 1881, Fredeman, Correspondence, 81.207, 226). The library of the Delaware Art Museum also has several sets of proofs for the 1881 volume where the poem was first published (from pages 188-234).

At least three impressions of the slip proofs were pulled, at DGR's request, before the poem was incorporated into the printing of the 1881 Poems. A New Edition (see DGR's letters to his publisher Ellis of 9 and 15 May 1881, Fredeman, Correspondence, 81.215, 223). DGR seems to have received his first set of proofs for correction around 17 May.