Small Notebook 4 (British Library)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Production Description

Document Title: [untitled]
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of composition: 1879-1880
Scribe: DGR

Provenance

Current Location: British Library
Catalog Number: Ashley 1410 (4)

Physical Description

Cover: decorated
Paper: white unlined
Dimensions of Document: 5.9 x 2.8 cm
Other Physical Features: The orientation of the texts in the notebook varies, but for the most part DGR wrote across the page and away from the gutter (on the rectos) and toward the gutter (on the versos). The pagination numbers at the upper right of the rectos were a later addition, probably done by Wise or at the British Library by a staff person. Also, at various points in the notebook someone, probably WMR, has marked the text with a series of X's for reasons that are not quite clear.

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

This is one of four small notebooks—all written in soft pencil— that DGR used between 1871-1880 to jot down memoranda of various kinds, including ideas for his literary and artistic work. The material from this notebook is mostly quite late, dating from 1880. This is especially true for the material that is written into the pages that proceed from the end of the book in terms of conventional pagination. DGR scripted this notebook, as he did with the other small notebooks, from both ends. Consequently when one finds, as here, five different draft texts associated with his sonnet on Keats, the sequence of these texts in compositional terms is from the back forward: in the case of the Keats sonnet, from [40r] to [38r], [38v], and ending at [37r].

Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 22p-1880.blnb4.rad.xml
Copyright: By permission of the British Library