First Fire (fair copy, British Library)

This is a copy made after the manuscript text of the poem in the Troxell Collection. This manuscript originally formed part of the set of notebook poems that DGR made for Jane Morris—the so-called Kelmscott Love Sonnets, now in the Bodleian Library. The latter is a collection of poems whose principal group is a set of sonnets DGR wrote to and for Mrs. Morris, principally in the summer of 1871.

The date of composition is 1871, but this copy was also probably made later, around 1874.

Originally part of the notebook he sent to Jane Morris in 1874, this poem was removed from the book, possibly because its treatment was too frankly erotic.