A Trip to Paris and Belgium
[Travel Sonnets]
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Production Description
Document Title: [A Trip to Paris and Belgium / Travel Sonnets]
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of composition: 1849 October
Type of Manuscript: fair copy
Note: The manuscript consists of two holograph leaves plus a small leaf attached later with a note by WMR. One of the holograph
leaves is twice the size of the other, which has been torn
in order to make both into a small letter packet. The larger leaf is folded twice, once vertically and then again horizontally.
The smaller leaf is folded horizontally. Thus folded, DGR
was able to address the packet to George Tupper and enclose the whole thing for posting (Geo. Tupper/25 Clemont Lane/Lombard
Street). The note by WMR was added much later when he was editing his brother's poems.
Scribe: DGR
Corrector: DGR
Provenance
Current Location: Duke U. Library
Note: In Baum's
Analytical List of Manuscripts in the Duke University Library this is indexed as No.XX.
Physical Description
Paper: light blue, 8 13/16 x 7 3/16 in. (large leaf); 8 13/16 x 3 5/3 in (smaller leaf)
Watermark: BACKHOUSE & CO/1849
Bibliography
- Baum,
Analytical List of Manuscripts in the Duke University Library With Hitherto Unpublished Verse and Prose12-14
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Copyright: Digital images used with permission of the Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library.
page images | transcript
Scholarly Commentary
Introduction
This selection of poems that DGR wrote during his 1849 trip to the continent represents a kind of epitome of the trip as DGR reflected on it at its conclusion. He sent the packet to his friend George Tupper, whose name and address appears on the first side (Geo. Tupper/25 Clemont Lane/Lombard Street). The texts (including prose notes) are on two sides of two folded blue leaves that make up six sides altogether.
DGR sent the packet to Tupper either from Bruges or (what is more likely) from London after he had returned from his trip to the continent in the fall of 1849. It includes “On a Handful of French Money”, “For an Allegorical Dance of Women”, “At the Station of the Versailles Railway”, “In the Train, and at Versailles”, “Sir Peter Paul Rubens”, “Antwerp to Ghent”, and “Between Ghent and Bruges”.
Textual History: Composition
The document was probably sent to Tupper sometime late in October.