Commentary
Introduction
The work that would evolve under the general title
<xref doc="a.44-1869.raw">The House of Life</xref>
took its first form as this sequence of sixteen sonnets, and the
latter began either with the visionary retrospection recorded in the
<xref doc="a.14-1869.raw">Willowwood</xref>
sonnets, which DGR wrote around 18 December 1868, or several months
earlier, in August, when he wrote the equally crucial
<xref doc="a.3-1868.raw">“Newborn Death”</xref>
sonnets. Some idea for the sequence was certainly in his mind in
November, as we can tell from the what we know of the dinner at the house of
William Bell Scott attended by DGR and John Morley, the editor of the
<xref doc="a.ap4.f7.raw">Fortnightly Review</xref>
. WMR recorded in his diary several days after that meeting that his
brother “has been looking up his poems of old days, with
some floating idea of offering some of them to
<xref doc="a.ap4.f7.raw">The Fortnightly Review</xref>
”
(see
Fredeman,
Correspondence
,
68. 157
and
WMR,
Pre-Raphaelite
Diaries and Letters
,
336
).
Whatever DGR was thinking in August and November, the composition of
the
<xref doc="a.14-1869.raw">Willowwood</xref>
sonnets led DGR, he told his brother, to consider putting together
“a little bunch in a coming number of the Fortnightly”
. The group would be
formed by “looking up a few old Sonnets, and writing a few
new ones”
(see his letter to Allingham of 23 December 1868,
Fredeman,
Correspondence
,
68. 173
). The group eventually became the
sixteen sonnet sequence that was published in the
<xref doc="a.ap4.f7.5.rad" workcode="52-1869">Fortnightly Review</xref>
in March 1869.
Although the work would eventually grow and mutate into many larger and
diverse forms, that original core group contains the essential elements of
all the subsequent forms. Most important, it is a group that pivots around
the sonnet
<xref doc="a.1-1862.raw">Lost Days</xref>
, which was written in 1862 and which centers in the memory of
Elizabeth Siddal. DGR recovered three other important early works (
<xref doc="a.1-1853.raw">“Known in Vain”</xref>
,
<xref doc="a.3-1854.raw">“The Landmark”</xref>
, and
<xref doc="a.4-1854.raw">“Lost on Both Sides”</xref>
, all written in 1853-54. The apparent reference of the first of
these three to Jane Burden led WMR to date the sonnet (mistakenly) 1857 (see
WMR,
Designer and Writer
,
293
). His error shows that WMR was aware of the dramatic significance of
the sonnet in the sequence at large. It is equally central to
the brief sixteen-sonnet sequence.
Textual History: Composition
As his letter of 23 December 1868 to WMR shows, DGR made up his sequence from
a group of old and new sonnets. The arrangement and revision of the group
took place between mid-December 1868, when he wrote the
<xref doc="a.14-1869.raw">“Willowwood”</xref>
sonnets, and March 1869, when the initial sequence appeared. Twelve
of the sonnets were new (i.e., were written 1868-1869), the others were
earlier work (one dating from 1862, the other three from 1853-1854). On 24
January 1869 WMR noted in his diary that DGR had just written the last of
the sixteen sonnets,
<xref doc="a.2-1868.raw">“A Superscription”</xref>
, and sent off the sequence of sixteen to the
<xref doc="a.ap4.f7.raw">Fortnightly Review</xref>
for publication (
Rossetti Papers 1862-1870
,
380
).
Textual History: Revision
The initial group was worked over between March and August 1869 until it
became a sequence of thirty-three sonnets. This group was included in the
copy he sent to the printer in August for printing in the so-called Penkill Proofs (proofs that would
eventuate in the publication of the 1870
<xref doc="a.1-1870.raw">
<hi rend="i">Poems</hi>
</xref>
.
Printing History
This sequence was printed as a group in the March 1869 issue of the
<xref doc="a.ap4.f7.5.rad" from="266" workcode="52-1869" to="273">
<hi rend="i">Fortnightly Review</hi>
</xref>
, pages 266-273, but was not reprinted thereafter. The sequence was
incorporated into the evolving form of the project known generally as
<xref doc="a.22-1881.raw">“The House of Life”</xref>
.
Autobiographical
This brief sequence defines in miniature the autobiographical substructure of
<xref doc="a.22-1881.raw">“The House of Life”</xref>
project as a whole. In putting the sixteen sonnets together, DGR
was careful to include works that sketched the general form of his quest for
love as it involved his relations with his dead wife Elizabeth Siddal and
Jane Morris. This
<xref doc="a.ap4.f7.5.rad" workcode="52-1869">
<hi rend="i">Fortnightly Review</hi>
</xref>
version of the project foregrounds the retrospective dynamic of the
work by opening the sequence with the four
<xref doc="a.14-1869.raw">Willowwood</xref>
sonnets, which in historical fact triggered the imaginative quest
dramatized in the sonnets.
Bibliographic
Gregory.,
<hi rend="i">A Bibliographical and Reference Guide to DGR</hi>
,
II. 116-119)
Robillard,
“Rossetti's Willowwood Sonnets”
(1962), 5-9