Letter to Frederick Stephens, ca. 10 August 1875
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Production Description
Document Title: Letter to Frederick Stephens, ca. 10 August 1875
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of composition: 1875 August 10
Type of Manuscript: letter
Person to Whom the Manuscript was Assigned: Frederick Stephens
Scribe: DGR
Provenance
Current Location: The Bodleian Library
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Scholarly Commentary
Introduction
This letter with its long enclosure is important in various respects. It contains texts of four sonnets by DGR as well as his prose commentaries on several of the paintings he had finished or was finishing at that time. The letter is a very good example of the kind of relationship he had with his old friend Stephens, and the influence DGR exerted on Stephens' critical notices of DGR's work that he was writing for The Athenaeum during the 1870s and 80s. This letter's enclosure underwrote the essay Stephens published in the 14 August 1875 number of that journal (at pp. 219-221). (See also DGR's letter to Stephens of 2 February 1881 .)