Letter to William Bell Scott, July 1853, manuscript
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Production Description
Document Title: Letter to William Bell Scott, July 1853
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of composition: 1853 July
Type of Manuscript: fair copy of sonnet in letter
Person to Whom the Manuscript was Assigned: William Bell Scott
Note: the letter is seven pages long
Scribe: DGR
Provenance
Current Location: Princeton University Library
Catalog Number: 23351
Note: The letter is in Box 9 folder 6 of the Troxell Collection
Physical Description
Other Physical Features: 7 leaves, 22 x 18.3cm
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
page images | transcript
Scholarly Commentary
Introduction
Included in DGR's letter is a fair copy of a sonnet he wrote at the time, “On the Site of a Mulberry-Tree, planted by William Shakespeare, felled by Rev. F. Gastrell” .
Printing History
The poem was first printed in The Academy , 15 February 1871. WMR has a note to the poem: “In the last line [DGR] substituted (in MS.) the word ‘Starveling's’ for ‘tailor's’; and I remember he once told me that his real reason for not publishing the sonnet in either of his volumes [i.e., 1870 or 1881] was to avoid hurting the feelings of some sensitive member or members of the tailoring craft” (1911, p. 667); see also Caine.
Literary
DGR's mention of “shotten herring” derives from Henry IV, Part 1, 2.4.143, where Falstaff tells Prince Hal that “if manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face of the earth, then am I a shotten herring. There live not three good men unhanged in England; and one of them is fat and grows old.” DGR likely had the passage in mind when writing line 6.