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
Other Physical Features: This is the same paper DGR used for the Duke Library's manuscript of “St. Agnes of Intercession”.

Bibliography

  • Baum, Analytical List of Manuscripts in the Duke University Library With Hitherto Unpublished Verse and Prose12-14

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.

Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 54-1849.dukems.rad.xml
Copyright: Digital images used with permission of the Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library.