Beauty and the Bird (fair copy, Huntington Library)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Production Description
Document Title: Bella's Bulfinch
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of composition: 1858
Type of Manuscript: Fair copy
Scribe: DGR
Corrector: DGR
Provenance
Current Location: Huntington Library
Catalog Number: HM 6083
Note: Originally from library of WMR, whose endorsement is
on the verso of the manuscript.
Physical Description
Paper: 19.6 x 12.5 (approx.) lined notebook paper
Watermark: none
Other Physical Features: The manuscript is roughly torn at the left so that all of
the original margin is gone as well as the lettering of some of the
initial words in almost all of the lines.
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Copyright: ©The Huntington Library
page images | transcript
Scholarly Commentary
Introduction
This is the text of the poem as it was initially first printed in the Penkill Proofs for the 1870 volume in August 1869. That printing date discounts WMR's suggestion, in his manuscript note on the verso of this leaf, that the leaf might be one from the notebook buried in DGR's wife's coffin in 1862. The coffined notebook was not recovered until October 1869.
WMR's suggestion that the sonnet might date from sometime earlier than 1858 is interesting and perhaps important.
The MS is mutilated; the missing text in each case is editorially supplied.