The Lovers' Walk Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 1871
abbaabbacddccd iambic pentameter sonnet
<artist/> <location/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnpictorial> <citnmythic> <name/> <culture/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnmythic> <citnhistorical> <event/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnhistorical> <citnautobiographical> <name/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnautobiographical> <citnscenic> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnscenic> </listcitn> </source> <commentaries> <head>Commentary</head> <section type="intro"> <head>Introduction</head> <p>The extreme artificiality of the sonnet is epitomized in line 1 (“in no wise”) and line 4 (“osier-odoured stream”). DGR's intent throughout is clear enough: to generate a series of paradoxical entanglements of materials drawn from very different orders. As Baum laconically remarks, “This sort of architectonics is not difficult to understand, but its appeal is to a rather limited and highly cultivated taste#x201d; (Baum, <xref doc="a.pr5244.h6.rad" link="dead" from="83"> <title level="bk"> <hi rend="i">House of Life</hi> . 83).

Textual History: Composition

Composed June 1871, five complete manuscripts come down to us and a sixth must have existed. The earliest of these is the corrected copy in the Library of Congress, which has a distinctively different sestet. The Ashley Library fair copy is also distinctive in that it is copied out as one of a group of three sonnets titled “Love and Loss”. The other manuscripts are the copies in the Fitzwilliam and Princeton and the fair copy in the Bodleian Kelmscott Love Sonnets group. Another manuscript existed but has not appeared, the one DGR sent to W. B. Scott in a letter of about 13 August 1871 (see his <hi rend="i">Autobiographical Notes</hi> (page 145)). Scott's transcript differs slightly from the received text of the sonnet.

Textual History: Revision

A fragment revision for lines 13-14 appears in the first of the small notebooks in the Ashley Library.

Production History

Reception

Iconographic

Printing History

First published in the 1881 <hi rend="i">Ballads and Sonnets</hi> and collected thereafter.

Pictorial

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

WMR, <hi rend="i">DGR Designer and Writer</hi> , 193 Baum, ed., <hi rend="i">House of Life</hi> 83-84

1881 Ballads and Sonnets First Edition text draws: Another instance of DGR's use of this wordplay, a favorite of his. Rest: a typographical error that persisted through all of the 1881 printings. WMR corrected it to “Rests” in his initial posthumous edition (1886) and thereafter. 1881 Ballads and Sonnets First Edition text The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, vol. 1 (1886) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1886 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), first edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 October 17 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), second edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1882), fourth edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1882 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), (author's proofs, British Library copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 April-June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature M (Delaware Museum, first author's proof, copy 2, revise) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 April 28 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, first proof, copy 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 April 25 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, first proof, copy 2) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 April 25 0 The House of Life, A Sonnet Sequence (composite manuscript posthumously arranged, Princeton/Troxell collection) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1869-1881 0 Small Notebook 1 (British Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871-1879? 0 The House of Life (composite manuscript posthumously arranged, Fitzwilliam Museum) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1845 - 1881 0 Love and Loss. (Three Sonnets.) (fair copy, British Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871? 0 The Bodleian Notebook (“Kelmscott Love Sonnets”) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1874 0 The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1911 0 Autobiographical Notes of the Life of William Bell Scott, Volume 2 W. Minto 1892 0 Twelve Sonnets and Some Other Poems by Dante G. Rossetti (Library of Congress posthumous MS book) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1848-1881 0