Introduction
The proofing process for DGR's two 1881 books, the
<hi rend="i">Poems. A New Edition</hi>
and the
<hi rend="i">Ballads and Sonnets</hi>
, did not carry on for as long as the notorious case of the 1870
<hi rend="i">Poems</hi>
. Nonetheless, the process was in certain respects every bit as
complex, and the documentary witnesses that record DGR's meticulous
attention to the proofs are almost as numerous. As in the case of the 1870
volume, here DGR used the proofing process as a compositional device. Not
only did he make numerous textual revisions and additions to specific poems
in the proofs, he used the visibilities of the print medium as a stimulus
for rethinking the organization of the book as a whole, and especially of
the content and sequencing of the poems that come in the last two sections
of the book.
When DGR began to consider publishing a new book in 1879 he imagined it would
be one volume, an augmentation of the 1870 volume. But as he began to get
practically involved in the project, he discovered that he had too much
material for a single volume, and too little for two. Throughout 1880 and
into early 1881, therefore, he was heavily involved with assessing and
revising old work as well as in writing new poems (see commentaries for the
two volumes). The printer's copy for the 1881
<hi rend="i">Poems. A New Edition</hi>
was a corrected set of
pages torn from a copy of the 1873 Tauchnitz edition of the 1870
volume, augmented with manuscript copies of poems that had not appeared in
any of the 1870-derived editions (the most significant of these being
“The Bride's Prelude”
).
The printer's copy for the
<hi rend="i">Ballads and Sonnets</hi>
was a heterogenous mixture of printed and manuscript materials as
well. The opening section featuring the three new ballads,
“Rose Mary”
,
“The White Ship”
, and
“The King's Tragedy”
, was printed from DGR's fair copies of those works. Printer's copy
for the 1881 version of
“The House of Life”
was a composite amalgam of (a) corrected printed texts taken from
the torn-up Tauchnitz edition that DGR used for printing
<hi rend="i">Poems. A New Edition</hi>
(see above); and (b) fair copy manuscript texts for the sonnets not
found in the 1870-derived editions of the sonnet sequence. The printed texts
for these sonnets do not appear to have survived, but the two bound volumes
of manuscripts assembled after DGR's death by Fairfax Murray—the
Troxell manuscript and the
Fitzwilliam
manuscript—both contain many individual sonnet manuscripts
that were originally printer's copy for the 1881 volume. Printer's copy for
the next section of the book survives: it is the bound volume in the Troxell
Collection headed
“Lyrics”
. An integral manuscript for the final section of “Sonnets” does not appear. In this case
the printer's copies are scattered in various places.
The extant proofs are the following: a revise proof of Signature R at Yale; a miscellaneous set of proof
signatures at Princeton (Signatures B, E, F, G, and L); at
Harvard, at set of proofs comprising
one copy each of Signatures A through L; at Delaware, an enormous set of
proofs comprising multiple copies of every signature except Signature I (a
total of 160 distinct signature units, most complete, some partial, and all
representing various stages of the proofing process from the first author's
proofs to final proofs); finally, a single
set of proofs for the entire volume (now at the British Museum,
but once part of the Rosenbach Library in Philadelphia). This set of proofs
is gathered in separate signatures within a mockup of the design for the
cover. There is one copy of each signature and all the copies are either
corrected first author's proofs or corrected first revise proofs, with the
exception of Signatures M and P, which are later (printer's) proofs
Analysis of these materials shows that first author's proofs for each
signature were pulled on the following schedule: B (5 April); C, D (6
April); E - G (7 April); H - L (13-14 April); M - N (25 April); O -Q (3-4
May); R - X (5-6 May); Y - Z (7 May). Revise proofs proliferated from the
point when DGR received these first proofs, which we can see must have been
sent to him immediately. The first
author's proof for Signature B, for example, is dated 5 April
while the first revise is date
stamped 7 April, which obviously means that DGR must have received the first
author's proof for this signature and returned it with his corrections right
away.
It also suggests, what is borne out by the proof witnesses, that DGR would be
correcting different proof states at the same time. That situation did not
prevail in the case of the long and complex proofing process for the 1870
<hi rend="i">Poems</hi>
, which developed through its series of complete and integral proof
states. The situation in 1881 meant not only that DGR was always proofing
in medias res, so to speak, but that changes he would
make in one signature would be affecting signatures that were in process of
printing but that he had not yet received. As a consequence, certain of the
signatures—Signatures L and N are the most outrageous
examples—would pass through multiple states of revision: twenty
different examples surive of Signature L, seventeen of Signature N. But
several of the signatures have ten or more witnesses. Multiple copies of
each signature were pulled, partly because the printer kept at least two
copies in house, and partly because DGR himself wanted at least two copies
(one of which he regularly had sent to his brother for comment and
suggestions). Because DGR's revisions and changes were numerous, and because
of the peculiar seriatim way in which the proof signatures were sent out,
those four initial copies could and did proliferate into many revises.