Commentary
Introduction
DGR tried to complete the textual work, begun in 1848 or 1849, in the late 1850s and again in 1869, but around 1878 he decided to leave it unfinished. In
the end he published it as an
extensive fragment, with the example of Coleridge very much in his mind, as
his proposed conclusion for the story, probably written in 1871, indicates (in his notes to the text WMR dates the prose fragment 1878). It may be that Elizabeth Siddal's picture
<hi rend="i">The Woeful Victory</hi>
was intended to illustrate the poem's conclusion.
Baum's introductory note to the poem in his 1937 edition is an acute and useful commentary on the poem's versification and it relation to the poem's subject (see
Baum's
<hi rend="i">
<xref doc="a.">Rossetti. Poems, Ballads and Sonnets</xref>
</hi>
,
123-124n.
).
The whereabouts of the primary pictorial example of the work, a pencil sketch sold recently at Sotheby's, is not known. DGR also made a more detailed crayon study of one of the seated women.
Textual History: Composition
The poem was begun in 1849, perhaps as early as the spring. Only a fragment of
this original work survives. DGR had completed 120 stanzas by late in September, when he noted that he intended to publish the
poem in
<hi rend="i">The Germ</hi>
(see his letter to William Bell Scott, 23 Sept. 1849,
Fredeman,
<hi rend="i">Correspondence</hi>
49. 12
). Further
composition was interrupted by his trip to the continent with Holman Hunt. By the following May DGR writes to
Scott that he has “given up” his poem and the idea of publishing it because “the proprietor” of the journal he offered it to had
judged it “immoral” (see
Fredeman,
<hi rend="i">Correspondence</hi>
I. 144
). He
thought again about publishing the poem in 1860, when he was putting together his (aborted) volume of
poems
<hi rend="i">Dante at Verona and other poems</hi>
. But even before the volume
was abandoned he had decided against the idea.
Textual History: Revision
Two prose descriptions of the poem's conclusion were drafted by DGR: the earlier one comes at the end of the
British Library manuscript,
the other—more finished—is held in the
Princeton University Library. A set of slip proofs prepared by the printer
Strangeways and Walden for the 1881
<hi rend="i">Poems</hi>
,
with DGR's revisions, is preserved in the Princeton-Taylor collection. These proofs represent a first revise from the first proof text of the poem that
DGR had printed off in early May 1881. A duplicate first revise is housed in the British Library. The initial
proof state is represented by the
corrected slip proofs housed in the library of the Delaware Art Museum.
Printing History
First published in the 1881
<hi rend="i">Poems</hi>
and
collected thereafter.
Bibliographic
Baum's
<hi rend="i">
<xref doc="a.">Rossetti. Poems, Ballads and Sonnets</xref>
</hi>
,
123-124n.
Bentley,
“Rossetti's ‘Bride Chamber Talk’ ”
(1976), 83-97.
Fontana,
“Fragment and Disease”
, 5-11.