Whatever the original state of the notebook, DGR must have composed in it at several times between 1872 and 1880 or even 1881. Those dates are securely determined for several distinct sets of pages, because of the presence in the notebook of (a) DGR's epigram on Flaubert, which he wrote in 1880 after the writer's death; (b) DGR's notes on his project, which he was working at with Frederick Shields in 1877-1878; and (c) his draft texts of passages from various poems and sonnets, some dating from as early as 1873, some as late as 1880 (like the pencil additions to ) as well as some prose notes on his projected 1881 book publications).

Some integral gatherings of leaf sequences can be distinguished. The first 12 pages (leaf 1 through leaf 6v) date from 1872-1875 and are especially interesting. They carry various fragments of verse and prose, many of which found their way into sonnets that eventually formed part of the 1881 “House of Life; or into other poems. A significant group of these texts focuses on DGR's memory of his dead wife and her Beatricean significance for him. The remainder of the leaves (pages [13] to [23],leaves 7r to 12 carry material from a later date, 1878-1880. It is clear, especially from the pattern of pencil additions and ancellations, that DGR went back over earlier parts of the notebook while he was composing new materials in later parts of it. He thus used the notebook as a vehicle for a running process of composition and revision.

Three leaves are included here at the end of this documentary reconstruction of the notebook because they are physically uniform with the pages known to have been originally part of this notebook. They probably formed part of it as well, but this fact remains uncertain.