Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature Y (Delaware Museum, three printer's copies)

These are three pages, torn from one of DGR's typical lined notebooks, on which he has pasted printed copies of three sonnets that were originally published in The Athenaeum. These The Athenaeum texts were sent by DGR to his publisher F. S. Ellis around 6 or 7 May 1881 in order to serve as printer's copy for DGR's 1881 Ballads and Sonnets, which was moving through its proofing at that point. The existence of these documents shows very clearly that DGR was constructing the organization of his book as he was involved in the proofing of the texts, and hence that he was using the proof process as a vehicle for clarifying to himself his compositional intentions and purposes. This is essentially the same procedure we see in DGR's preparation of his 1870 Poems .

DGR sent these texts after he had received the first author's proofs for Signature Y (pulled on 6 May), which is where the three poems are printed in DGR's book. The three sonnets are first printed in the first revise proof. The texts for the “Winter” and “Untimely Lost” sonnets are not altered from The Athenaeum texts in these pages, but the text for “Spring” has manuscript revisions.