Poems and Sonnets (Fitzwilliam Museum bound volume of miscellaneous poems)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Production Description

Document Title: Poems and Sonnets
Author: DGR
Date of composition: 1848-1881
Type of Manuscript: various
Collation: 76 leaves
Note: Each original manuscript leaf is fixed to a page in the bound volume.

Provenance

Current Location: The Fitzwilliam Museum
Archival History: Originally constructed from DGR's loose manuscripts by Charles Fairfax Murray, who gifted the book to the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Physical Description

Cover: Green leather
Paper: laid white
Watermark: J WHATMAN

1884
Other Physical Features: Murray's notebook houses DGR's original manuscripts, which are glued down to the notebook pages.

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

Many of the texts in this volume were originally printer's copy for various 1869 proof states set up for the 1870 Poems . They subsequently came into Charles Fairfax Murray's possession, and he arranged them in this bound volume with some thought, not rigorously pursued, to reflect the 1881 volume of Poems. A New Edition .

Fairfax Murray's arrangement of the final pages in this volume are problematic, especially as his choices often confuse the relationship between DGR's later additions to the poems and their insertion points. The edition presented here returns the manuscript pages to an arrangement which respects their grammatical sequence.

Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Copyright: Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge