Dante gabriel rossetti the house of life, sonnet sequence a variorum edition with introduction and notes

THE HOUSE OF LIFE
A Sonnet-Sequence
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti


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version of this book.

Rossetti’s pen-and-ink design for his Sonnet on the Sonnet. S. 258. Private
Collection. See p. 38 note 9.


THE HOUSE OF LIFE
A Sonnet-Sequence
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Variorum Edition
with an
Introduction and Notes

by
Roger C. Lewis

Boydell & Brewer
2007

Disclaimer:
Some images in the original version of this book are not
available for inclusion in the eBook.

The author and publishers are grateful to all the institutions and individuals listed
for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort
has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission,
and the publishers will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in
subsequent editions.


ANNAE UXORI
For my wife Nancy



Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Note on Edited Text and Apparatus
List of Abbreviations and Sigla
Introduction
Sonnet Texts and Notes
[PROEM Sonnet]

x
xi
xiii
xvi
1

27
35

Part I. Youth and Change.
Sonnet I. Love Enthroned.
Sonnet II. Bridal Birth.
Sonnet III. Love’s Testament.
Sonnet IV. Lovesight.
Sonnet V. Heart’s Hope.
Sonnet VI. The Kiss.
Sonnet VIa. Nuptial Sleep.
Sonnet VII. Supreme Surrender.
Sonnet VIII. Love’s Lovers.
Sonnet IX. Passion and Worship.
Sonnet X. The Portrait.
Sonnet XI. The Love-Letter.
Sonnet XII. The Lovers’ Walk.
Sonnet XIII. Youth’s Antiphony.
Sonnet XIV. Youth’s Spring-Tribute.
Sonnet XV. The Birth-Bond.
Sonnet XVI. A Day of Love.
Sonnet XVII. Beauty’s Pageant.
Sonnet XVIII. Genius in Beauty.
Sonnet XIX. Silent Noon.
Sonnet XX. Gracious Moonlight.
Sonnet XXI. Love-Sweetness.
Sonnet XXII. Heart’s Haven.
Sonnet XXIII. Love’s Baubles.
Sonnet XXIV. Pride of Youth.
Sonnet XXV. Winged Hours.

Sonnet XXVI. Mid-Rapture.
Sonnet XXVII. Heart’s Compass.
Sonnet XXVIII. Soul-Light.

39
39
40
42
44
46
47
48
52
55
56
58
61
63
65
67
68
70
71
72
73
76
78
80
82
83

85
86
87
88


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Table of Contents

Sonnet XXIX. The Moonstar.
Sonnet XXX. Last Fire.
Sonnet XXXI. Her Gifts.
Sonnet XXXII. Equal Troth.
Sonnet XXXIII. Venus Victrix.
Sonnet XXXIV. The Dark Glass.
Sonnet XXXV. The Lamp’s Shrine.
Sonnet XXXVI. Life-in-Love.
Sonnet XXXVII. The Love-Moon.
Sonnet XXXVIII. The Morrow’s Message.
Sonnet XXXIX. Sleepless Dreams.
Sonnet XL. Severed Selves.
Sonnet XLI. Through Death to Love.
Sonnet XLII. Hope Overtaken.
Sonnet XLIII. Love and Hope.
Sonnet XLIV. Cloud and Wind.
Sonnet XLV. Secret Parting.
Sonnet XLVI. Parted Love.
Sonnet XLVII. Broken Music.
Sonnet XLVIII. Death-in-Love.

Sonnets XLIX, L, LI, LII. Willowwood.
Sonnet LIII. Without Her.
Sonnet LIV. Love’s Fatality.
Sonnet LV. Stillborn Love.
Sonnets LVI., LVII., LVIII. True Woman.
I. Herself.
II. Her Love.
III. Her Heaven.
Sonnet LIX. Love’s Last Gift.
End of Part I.

90
91
92
94
96
97
98
100
102
103
104
106
107
109
111
112
113
115
116

117
119
129
130
131
133
133
137
139
142
142

Part II. Change and Fate.
Sonnet LX. Transfigured Life.
Sonnet LXI. The Song-Throe.
Sonnet LXII. The Soul’s Sphere.
Sonnet LXIII. Inclusiveness.
Sonnet LXIV. Ardour and Memory.
Sonnet LXV. Known in Vain.
Sonnet LXVI. The Heart of the Night.
Sonnet LXVII. The Landmark.
Sonnet LXVIII. A Dark Day.
Sonnet LXIX. Autumn Idleness.
Sonnet LXX. The Hill Summit.

144
144
146
147
149

151
154
155
157
158
161
164


Table of Contents

Sonnets LXXI., LXXII., LXXIII. The Choice.
Sonnets LXXIV., LXXV., LXXVI. Old and New Art.
I. St. Luke the Painter.
II. Not as These.
III. The Husbandmen.
Sonnet LXXVII. Soul’s Beauty.
Sonnet LXXVIII. Body’s Beauty.
Sonnet LXXIX. The Monochord.
Sonnet LXXX. From Dawn to Noon.
Sonnet LXXXI. Memorial Thresholds.
Sonnet LXXXII. Hoarded Joy.
Sonnet LXXXIII. Barren Spring.
Sonnet LXXXIV. Farewell to the Glen.
Sonnet LXXXV. Vain Virtues.
Sonnet LXXXVI. Lost Days.
Sonnet LXXXVII. Death’s Songsters.
Sonnet LXXXVIII. Hero’s Lamp.
Sonnet LXXXIX. The Trees of the Garden.
Sonnet XC. “Retro Me, Sathana!”.

Sonnet XCI. Lost on Both Sides.
Sonnets XCII., XCIII. The Sun’s Shame.
Sonnet XCIV. Michelangelo’s Kiss.
Sonnet XCV. The Vase of Life.
Sonnet XCVI. Life the Beloved.
Sonnet XCVII. A Superscription.
Sonnet XCVIII. He and I.
Sonnets XCIX., C. Newborn Death.
Sonnet CI. The One Hope.
End of The House of Life.
Appendix One. Dating and Ordonnance
Appendix Two. Poems: Proof States
Appendix Three. Poems: Chronology 1868–71
Appendix Four. Poems: Bibliographical Summaries
Appendix Five. Ballads and Sonnets: Chronology 1879–82
Appendix Six. Ballads and Sonnets: Bibliographical Summaries
Appendix Seven. Locations of Sources
Appendix Eight. Unpublished and Excluded Sonnets
Bibliography of Works Cited or Consulted

ix

167
172
172
174
177
179
181
184

186
187
189
191
193
195
196
197
200
202
204
207
209
212
214
215
216
218
219
223
223
227
247
250
254
261
274
278
288
298

List of Illustrations
Frontispiece: Rossetti’s pen-and-ink design for his
Sonnet on the Sonnet
Plate I: Annotated proofsheet of 25 Apr 81
with Prefatory Note to House of Life
Plate II: Self-portrait by Elizabeth Siddal
Table: Locations of proofsheets for Ballads and Sonnets

xxii
opp. 131
23


Acknowledgements
This book began as a proposal for a Ph.D. dissertation more than
forty years ago. I cannot now remember the names of everyone who
helped me with the research necessary to complete this variorum
edition. Many of them, some of those most vividly and fondly
remembered, are now beyond thanking, but I must thank them anyway.
I shall start by naming my predecessors in undertaking a separate
edition of the House: Frederick Page, Paull Baum, Janet Troxell,
Kathryn Gordon and Thomas Delsey, whose work I have built on.
No one has done more to unearth Rossetti’s manuscripts, letters
and scarce printed materials than William E. Fredeman, the godfather of
Pre-Raphaelite studies and Editor of The Correspondence of Dante
Gabriel Rossetti (D. S. Brewer, 10 vols): my book is the first to make extensive use of that monumental edition. Neither has anyone done more
to help me personally and professionally with this edition than Dick
Fredeman. From July 1975, when my research assistant Gavin Murdock

and I descended on his Allison Road home and library, to a few days
before his death in July 1999, Dick shared his collection, his letters
edition-in-progress, his wisdom, expertise and vast network of contacts
to aid my editorial efforts. The generosity and hospitality he offered
to fellow-scholars during the Allison Road days were matched by his
wife Jane Cowan Fredeman, who continued to extend them both
towards me after Dick was gone by acting as my editor on this book.
I was assisted in the early stages of this edition by my able and
supportive mentors F. E. L. Priestley and Malcolm M. Ross. Other
Rossettians who have aided and encouraged my research include
Robert N. Keane, Robert S. Fraser, Joseph P. Gardner, Rosalie Glynn
Grylls (Lady Mander), Roger W. Peattie, Allan and Page Life, Mark
Samuels Lasner and Jerome J. McGann. The co-operation of collectors
and family custodians of rare material is essential in work of this
kind: it is too late now to thank two of William Rossetti’s granddaughters, Imogen Dennis and Lucy O’Conor, and collectors Simon
Nowell-Smith, Sir Paul Getty and Halsted B. Vanderpoel, but
without their help this edition would have been badly compromised.
Booksellers are vitally important to scholarly editing as well: I must
thank Maggs Bros., Ian Hodgkins and Co., Antony Rota, Bernard
Quaritch and John Fleming.
The list of Librarians and Curators who enabled my research both
in person and by other means would fill pages, so I am forced to be


xii

Acknowledgements

both selective and collective. The staff of every repository mentioned
in Appendix Seven (Location of Sources) is here formally thanked, but

my greatest demands were made on personnel at the Firestone
Library at Princeton, the Fitzwilliam Museum Library at Cambridge,
the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library at Yale and the
Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington: I was particularly obliged to
Rob Fraser at Princeton, Phyllis Giles and P. Woudhuysen at the
Fitzwilliam, Marjorie Wynne at Yale and Phyllis Nixon and Rowland
Elzea at Delaware Art Museum. Donald Sinclair advised me on using
the Symington Collection at Rutgers. George Brandak showed me
around the Rossetti family archive at the University of British
Columbia. Tim Burnett helped solve my problems in the British
Library Department of Manuscripts. Finally, I am grateful to the staff
in the Bodleian Library Bibliographic Centre, the Folger Shakespeare
Library and Dan Tierney in the New York Public Library for teaching
me the mysteries of collating machines.
I acknowledge with gratitude and humility the enormous role
that my editors played in the creation of this book. Jane Cowan is
mentioned above. I thank the editorial staff at Boydell & Brewer,
particularly Caroline Palmer. I owe a special debt of gratitude to my
tireless and unflappable technical editor, my indispensable wizard of
word-processing, Barbara Lange.
Chasing Rossetti manuscripts is expensive. My initial searching in
England was facilitated by a Queen Elizabeth II Ontario Scholarship
and two Canada Council Pre-Doctoral Fellowships. Later research
was generously funded through two Research Grants awarded by the
Canada Council and its successor the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC); many smaller SSHRCC
Grants were made through Acadia University, which also gave me
several Reid Summer Study Awards and a generous amount of
supported leave. Indeed, Acadia, my academic home, supported my
research in countless ways, not least through assigning several

student research assistants to me over thirty years. Other support
received came from the University of Toronto Research Travel Fund,
the British Council, the Nuffield Foundation and the Royal Academy.
I had many research assistants but the best of them were Gavin
Murdock, Keith Anderson, Joe Kanary and my wife Nancy: this book
is dedicated to her.


Note on the Edited Text
and Apparatus
This is a variorum edition in the sense that it lists all the textual
variants, including revisions and trials (both cancelled and uncancelled),
in Rossetti’s manuscripts, notebooks, letters, proofsheets and printed
texts with authority. No periodical or other separate printing of a
House of Life sonnet is considered to have authority unless the copy-text
derives directly from the poet or he is known to have seen proofs of
the items. It is not the sort of variorum edition that includes a history
of scholarship on the poem with representative excerpts or a large and
various selection of notes and comments on the text by previous editors
and critics. Both my bibliographies, the following list of frequently
cited sources and the terminal list (pp. 298–301) of occasionally cited
sources, do not therefore aim at completeness or inclusiveness. I have
not attempted an exegesis or paraphrase of the poem.
Rather, I have striven to present the essential materials needed for
such a critical task and to indicate where supporting materials may
be found. I have read many critical studies of the sequence and
individual sonnets in it, some of which I have cited below because I
found them relevant and insightful or helpful in establishing context
in the way that Rossetti’s exchanges by post with Swinburne or Caine
provide context for some of the sonnets. Not every brilliant article on

The House of Life is mentioned in this book, but neither is it crammed
with all the dull and superfluous criticism of this poem that has been
pouring forth since Robert Buchanan started the tradition in 1871.
The reader is left to construct an interpretation of the poem and to
choose between good and bad criticism of it.
My primary purpose has been to print exactly the text that
Rossetti intended the reader to have, in its final form. To that end, I
chose as copy-text the first edition of Ballads and Sonnets (1881), the
last form of the sequence seen through the press by the poet. Some
emendations were adopted from the resetting in 1882 of this text,
called the fourth edition, because the poet had identified to his
publisher mistakes he wanted corrected in the next edition or
because there were obvious mistakes, wrong indents or dropped-out
characters, that he would have corrected had he lived to see proofs of
the fourth edition. I also accepted William Rossetti’s restoration to


xiv

Note on the Edited Text and Apparatus

the sequence of Nuptial Sleep as VIa, although the poet had
suppressed it in 1881.
Original or early editions of all sources cited or quoted are fully
identified. Where an accessible and reliable reprint of a rare original
exists, I have noted the fact. The abundant quotes from the Fredeman
Correspondence edition follow the Editorial Procedures outlined there
on pp. xxxv–xli, Vol. I. Rossetti’s quoted letters follow the MSS exactly
and respect his erratic usage. When the letter quoted is in one of the
later volumes not yet published, other printed sources follow the

WEF identification e.g. the Doughty-Wahl or Bryson collections of
letters.
In this edition, protocols for abbreviations, dates, insertion of
marginal content and documentation in annotations and footnotes
are consistent where practicable with the WEF edition so that the two
may be used together with a minimum of confusion. For the WEF,
Doughty-Wahl, Bryson and Lang (Swinburne) editions of letters, I
identify the quote by a letter number. However, in editions like Roger
Peattie’s of William Rossetti’s correspondence and William’s own
editions of his brother’s and sister’s letters, where there is so much
commentary and annotation, I use ‘No.’ for a letter citation: otherwise
my numbers refer to pages. Some page references to Doughty-Wahl
occur when their notes are being cited because their note numbering
is not consecutive (i.e., the same letter could have more than one n1).
Conjectural dates for letters are enclosed in square brackets; a prefatory
? before a date in square brackets indicates that it is a guess.
Date and place references for composition and publication of each
sonnet are followed by source abbreviations. In my Frequently
Cited/Consulted Sources I have relied heavily on the records of
William Rossetti, William Bell Scott, Ford Madox Brown, Jane Morris,
Hall Caine, Thomas Hake, Theodore Watts-Dunton and other
contemporaries, not because they were profound scholars or eminent
literary authorities, but because they were close friends and eyewitnesses to the poet’s life.
Recording revisions and variants is discussed below under
‘Stylistic Conventions and Sigla’. As befits a variorum edition, I have
tried to compile complete rather than selective lists of variants, but
even with magnifying glasses and infrared photography it is not
always possible to decipher a palimpsest, reconstruct a cancelled or
erased passage or read an illegible scrawl.
While I have aimed at an exact reproduction of the texts of the

sonnets, I have not followed the first edition precisely in the matter of
accidentals. Line numbers were inserted to help the reader follow
often-complex lists of variants. There are no broken-up or spilled-


Note on the Edited Text and Apparatus

xv

over lines. Rossetti’s dashes are all en-dashes with spaces around
them. I have not capitalized the first word of each sonnet.
The ‘curly’ quotation marks of Ballads and Sonnets are not present
because the book is set in Palatino. While following the first edition
in using Roman numerals above each sonnet title, in my notes,
commentary and tables I have sought to avoid confusion with the
Poems (1870) version of the sequence by identifying all 1881 sonnets
by their Arabic number and all 1870 sonnets by their Roman number.


List of Abbreviations and Sigla
Frequently-recurring names and frequently-cited sources are
usually abbreviated in the notes and apparatus; these protocols and
others follow as closely as possible those used in W. E. Fredeman’s
The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (WEF). Abbreviations for
MS and other rare or unique sources appear in Appendix Seven. A
bibliography of works cited or consulted occasionally is on pp. 298–
301; throughout the text citations of these works consist of the author’s
last name, the year of publication and page or chapter numbers
ACS

Algernon Charles Swinburne

CGR

Christina Georgiana Rossetti

DGR

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

EES

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (DGR’s wife)

FLR

Frances Lavinia Rossetti (DGR’s mother)

HC

Thomas Henry Hall Caine

JM

Jane Morris

PR/B

Pre-Raphaelite/Brotherhood

PRISM

Pre-Raphaelitism

TWD

Walter Theodore Watts-Dunton

WBS

William Bell Scott

WMR

William Michael Rossetti

Rossetti’s Printed Works
B&S

Ballads and Sonnets (Ellis and White, 1881)

EIP

The Early Italian Poets (Smith, Elder, 1861)

HL

The House of Life (Poems pp. 187–255; B&S pp.
161–263)

List of Abbreviations and Sigla

xvii

Poems

Poems (Ellis, 1870–72 eds 1–6)

Poems: New

Poems: A New Edition (Ellis and White, 1881)

Tauchnitz

Poems (7th ed. Tauchnitz, 1873)

Works; CW

WMR, ed. The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
London: Ellis, 1911. Enlarged from WMR’s
Collected Works (CW). 2 vols. London: Ellis and
Scrutton, 1886.

Stylistic Conventions and Sigla
MS/MSS

Manuscript(s)

Ed./eds

Edition(s)

Vol./vols

Volume(s)

Sig./sigs

Signature(s)

Fol./fols

Folio(s)

n/nn

Note(s)

Date/month/year

15 Oct 81 or 5 Jul: but, months without year or
day are spelled out or given in full, as are
single and non-nineteenth-century years, e.g.
15 Oct 1781

Ampersands

Used only in abbreviated bibliographical
references: ‘WEF 69.258 & nn’ or ‘PML MSS

6081 & 6083’

MSS, Revisions and Variants
I have as far as possible listed the MSS in chronological order and
given the variants the same order. When an early version of a sonnet
differs greatly from the final text I give it in full. When two sources
are compared, the earlier one comes first: the readings of the later one
are in bold face, the two separated by a virgule (/). Proofsheets and
printed texts revised in Rossetti’s hand are treated as MSS:
<revision> angle brackets enclose a word, phrase, line or passage
deleted from a MS. The new reading substituted follows. If further
deletions and substitutions occur, they too will be enclosed in


xviii

List of Abbreviations and Sigla

angle brackets following in the order of substitution until the
final reading in that MS.
<<revision>> double, or triple, angle brackets are used to indicate
revisions within revisions; deletions and substitutions within
double brackets are thus enclosed within single brackets.
[MS breaks off here] square brackets contain editorial insertions: they
are also used to identify conjectural dates, speculative readings or
references (sometimes preceded by a question mark if the editor
is guessing) or to separate editorial comment from the text of
revisions and variants.
Frequently Cited or Consulted Sources
ALC

The Ashley Library: A Catalogue of Printed Books,
Manuscripts, and Autograph Letters Collected by
Thomas J. Wise. 11 vols. London: Printed for
Private Circulation, 1922–36. Reissued with a
new preface by Simon Nowell-Smith. Folkestone:
Dawson’s, 1971.
AN

William Minto, ed. Autobiographical Notes of the
Life of William Bell Scott and Notices of His Artistic
and Poetic Circle of Friends 1830–82. 2 vols.
London: Osgood, 1892.

Bibliography

WMR. Bibliography of the Works of Dante Gabriel
Rossetti. London: Ellis, 1905; repr. New York:
AMS, 1971.

Bryson

John Bryson, ed., with Janet Camp Troxell.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Jane Morris: Their
Correspondence. Oxford: Clarendon, 1976.

Buchanan

Robert Buchanan. The Fleshly School of Poetry
and Other Phenomena of the Day. London: Strahan,
1872. Expanded from Buchanan’s pseudonymous attack on DGR in the Contemporary

Review (Oct 71): 334–50. Repr. New York: AMS,
1975. For more bibliography and other details
of this controversy that precipitated DGR’s
breakdown in the summer of 1872 see
Appendices 8 & 9 in WEF Vol. V.


List of Abbreviations and Sigla

xix

Caine

Hall Caine. Recollections of Rossetti. London:
Stock, 1882; contains many excerpts from DGR’s
letters to HC, some misquoted and conflated.

ClassLists

WMR. Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Classified Lists of
His Writings with the Dates. London: privately
printed in 100 copies, 1906.

DGRDW

WMR. Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and
Writer. London: Cassell, 1889. Repr. New York:
AMS, 1970. Includes sonnet-by-sonnet prose
paraphrase of HL pp. 179–262.

Doughty

Oswald Doughty. A Victorian Romantic: Dante
Gabriel Rossetti. London: Frederick Muller,
1949. Rev. ed. 1960.

DW

Oswald Doughty and John Robert Wahl, eds.
Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 4 vols. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1965–67. Vol. I 1835–60 Letters
1–353 pp. 1–385; Vol. II 1861–70 Letters 354–1094
pp. 387–921; Vol. III 1871–76 Letters 1095–1744
pp. 923–1468; Vol. IV 1877–82 Letters 1745–2615
pp. 1469–1953.

FL/FLM

WMR. Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Family Letters
with a Memoir. 2 vols. London: Ellis, 1895. Vol. 1:
Memoir (FLM). Vol. 2: Letters (FL); repr. New
York: AMS, 1970.

FLCGR

The Family Letters of Christina Georgiana Rossetti,
ed. WMR. London: Brown, Langham, 1908.

FR

‘Of Life, Love, and Death: Sixteen Sonnets’,
Fortnightly Review (March 1869): 266–73.

Grylls

Rosalie Glynn Grylls [see also Rosalie, Lady
Mander]. Portrait of Rossetti. London:
Macdonald, 1964.

Harrison

The Letters of Christina Rossetti, ed. Antony H.
Harrison. 3 vols. Charlottesville: U Virginia P,
1997.


xx

List of Abbreviations and Sigla

HRA

Helen Rossetti Angeli. Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His
Friends and Enemies. London: Hamilton, 1949.

Kelvin

Norman Kelvin, ed. The Collected Letters of
William Morris. 5 vols. Princeton NJ: Princeton
UP, 1984–96.

Lang

Cecil Y. Lang, ed. The Swinburne Letters. 6 vols.
New Haven CT: Yale UP, 1959–62.

Lewis

Roger C. Lewis. Thomas J. Wise and the Trial
Book Fallacy. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995.

Marillier

Henry Currie Marillier. Dante Gabriel Rossetti:
An Illustrated Memorial of His Art and Life.
London: Bell, 1899.

MS Diary

MS Diary of WMR in the Angeli-Dennis Papers
at UBC, an almost continuous record of literary
and artistic events and family activities from
early PRB days to the close of WMR’s life in 1919.

Masefield

John Masefield. Thanks Before Going: Notes on
Some of the Original Poems of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
London: Heinemann, 1946.

Peattie

Roger W. Peattie, ed. Selected Letters of William
Michael Rossetti. University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania UP, 1990.

PFB 1) 2) 3)

Paull Franklin Baum, ed. 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti:
An Analytical List of Manuscripts in the Duke
University Library with Hitherto Unpublished
Verse and Prose. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1931;
2) The House of Life: A Sonnet Sequence.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1928; 3) ‘The Bancroft Manuscripts of Dante
Gabriel Rossetti’, Modern Philology (Aug 1941):
47–68.

PRISM

William E. Fredeman. Pre-Raphaelitism: A Bibliocritical Study. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1965.


List of Abbreviations and Sigla

xxi

RP

WMR, ed. Rossetti Papers, 1862–70. London:

Sands, 1903.

S/Surtees

Virginia Surtees. Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Catalogue Raisonné. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1971.
S. followed by a number identifies an entry in
the catalogue.

SR

WMR. Some Reminiscences. 2 vols. London:
Brown Langham, 1906.

Wahl

John Robert Wahl. The Kelmscott Love Sonnets of
Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Cape Town: A.H.
Balkema, 1954.

WA/GBH

George Birkbeck Hill, ed. Letters of Dante Gabriel
Rossetti to William Allingham 1854–70. London:
Unwin, 1897.

WEF

William E. Fredeman, ed. The Correspondence
of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 10 vols. Completing
Editors: Roger C. Lewis, Jane Cowan, Roger

Peattie, Allan Life, Page Life. Cambridge: D.S.
Brewer, 2002–; Vol. I 1835–54; Vol. II 1855–62;
Vol. III 1863–67; Vol. IV 1868–70; Vol. V 1871–
72; Vol. VI 1873–74; Vol. VII to be issued in 2007.

WMRD

Odette Bornand. The Diary of William Michael
Rossetti 1870–1873. Oxford: Clarendon, 1977.


Disclaimer:
Some images in the original version of this book are not
available for inclusion in the eBook.
To view the image on this page please refer to the printed
version of this book.

Annotated proofsheet for Ballads and Sonnets of 25 Apr 81 with
Prefatory Note to The House of Life. Princeton. See p. 34 note 5.


Introduction
The Building of The House of Life
In 1909, Wilfred S. Blunt, author of the sonnet sequence Esther,
asserted to Sir Sydney Cockerell that he considered Dante Gabriel
Rossetti’s 103-sonnet poem The House of Life ‘the greatest of all the
great Victorian poems’. This image of its loftiness has been popular
among the poem’s would-be interpreters, who regard it as an unscaled,
perhaps unscalable, pinnacle among Victorian peaks. Certainly, its
textual complexities are formidable, and it is impossible to attempt an

authoritative interpretation of the House without the benefit of a
proper critical edition. The final version, which appeared in Ballads
and Sonnets (1881), contained sonnets written as early as 1847, before
the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and as late as 1880.
The individual ‘sonnet-stanzas’ of the House were thus composed over a
period of thirty-four years, twice the time it took Alfred Tennyson to
compose all the individual lyrics of In Memoriam.
The sequence itself appeared in three different states: 16 sonnets
in 1869, published in the Fortnightly Review with the title ‘Of Life,
Love, and Death’; 50 sonnets and 11 lyrics published in Poems (1870)
with the title ‘Sonnets and Songs, towards a Work to Be Called The
House of Life’; 102 sonnets (including an unnumbered proem-sonnet
but no songs) published in Ballads and Sonnets (1881) as The House of
Life in a two-part sequence with the subtitles ‘Youth and Change’ (59
sonnets) and ‘Change and Fate’ (42 sonnets). Jerome McGann identifies
a fourth state (McGann 2003: 386), the Bodleian Library MSS of 30
sonnets and songs that J. R. Wahl published as The Kelmscott Love
Sonnets of D. G. Rossetti, but McGann’s claim that these documents
form ‘a relatively coherent’ version of the sequence is difficult to
support. They form no entity and have no unity beyond being a
collection of fair copies that Rossetti included in letters to Jane Morris.
Some of these poems were never part of any version of the House.
Nevertheless, McGann’s emphasis on the instability of this long
poem is critically sound: it is a house built upon ever-shifting sands.
Some poems added to the final House in 1881 originally appeared
in the ‘Sonnets for Pictures and Other Sonnets’ section of Poems
(1870). To the despair of his printer, Rossetti experimented with a
half-dozen different sonnets in the initial position and shifted large

2

Introduction

groups of sonnets within the sequence in the course of his manic
composing and revising from 1868 to 1870. He constantly revised
individual octaves, sestets and lines as well, introducing these
changes at all stages, even on press-proofs. Some of his proofsheets
used as printer’s copy contain so much revision and additional
material that an editor may be justified in regarding them as MSS. As
John Carter remarked in 1972, no publisher today would tolerate this
amount of revision at the proof stage from a best-selling novelist,
never mind a poet.
What does all this textual instability signify, and how should an
editor deal with it? Answers to the first question abound among Rossetti
critics. Perhaps the most common is that Rossetti was a relentless perfectionist, a ferocious competitor in the struggle to determine the poetic
survival of the fittest. His goal was hyperdense, multifaceted significance, to be achieved by what he described to Hall Caine as ‘fundamental brainwork’ (WEF 81.104) and summed up in a phrase from
his sonnet on the Sonnet as ‘arduous fulness’, a phrase once parodied
by the unsympathetic critic John Addington Symonds as ‘plethoric
verbiage’. Rossetti contrasted his compositional methods with those
of his more fluent and prolific friends Swinburne and Morris, depicting
himself as agonizing upon his couch, the racked and tortured medium
through whom the Muse vouchsafed only a few lines at a time. Too
much emphasis on biographical explanations of The House of Life,
however, obscures Rossetti’s ambition to be regarded as a fine
sonneteer. As C. S. Lewis observed, the man who writes a good love
sonnet needs not only to be enamoured of a woman but also to be
enamoured of the sonnet.
Like that other inveterate reviser, Tennyson, Rossetti was
diffident about his poetic gift, determined to publish only work

adjudged to be his finest by family and friends and paranoid about
criticism from all others. In this matter his painting parallels his
poetry to some extent: he was as reluctant to exhibit as he was to
publish, and he painted out heads as often as he cancelled stanzas. But
there is a very important difference. He thought of his poetry as
untainted by commercialism, affirming an integrity and evincing a
dedication in his literary art that he felt he had surrendered by
painting so many potboilers. He began and ended his career as an
artist by writing poetry; it is striking that in the 1880s he was revising
poems that he had written in the 1840s. What Johnson said of Pope is
true of Rossetti: ‘to make verses was his first labour, and to mend
them was his last’.