Letter to Jane Morris, 3 September 1880
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Production Description
Document Title: Letter to Jane Morris, 3 September 1880
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of composition: 1880 September 3
Type of Manuscript: letter
Person to Whom the Manuscript was Assigned: Jane Morris
Scribe: DGR
Provenance
Current Location: The British Library
Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Scholarly Commentary
Introduction
The transcription of “The Day-Dream” in this letter is one of two manuscript copies of the poem. F.G. Stephens received the other copy around January of 1881, when DGR and Stephens were in contact concerning Stephen's essay on the painting. The Stephen's manuscript closely resembles the poem as printed in the 1881 Ballads and Sonnets . The present version of the poem contains more violent imagery in lines 5-6 than that found in the published version: “The embowered throstles' urgent clangours gore / The Summer silence” was revised to “The embowered throstle's urgent wood-notes soar / Through summer silence.”