Two Books From the Library of Dante Gabriel Rossetti
[STOKES, Whitley, translator.]
The Passion. [Pascon agan arluth / The Passion of our Lord.] [Berlin, Berlin Philological Society, 1861.]
[bound with:]
BOSONE DA GUBBIO. Fortunatus siculus ossia l’avventuroso ciciliano … romanzo storico … [Florence, all’insegna di Dante, 1832.]
[and with:]
ROSSETTI, William Michael. Reviews: ‘The London Exhibitions of 1861’, ‘The Royal Academy Exhibitions of 1861[–5]’ (some imperfect) from Fraser’s Magazine.
[and with:]
[POLYDORE, Henry F., translator.] ‘Journal of an officer of the Swiss Guards of Louis XVI’, from Fraser’s Magazine, 1867.
[and six others.]
Ten works, 8vo, Stokes: pp. 100, with a drop-head title, original drab front wrapper (doubly inscribed), bound in; Bosone da Gubbio: pp. xxxvi, [4], 358, [2], the half title and title-page defective, with lower halves restored, original printed front wrapper bound in (very stained), half-title inscribed ‘W.M.Rossetti from Gabriel’s books 1882’; WMR: variously paginated, some articles imperfect; Polydore: pp. 569–586; bound together in contemporary half diced roan; ownership inscriptions of William Michael Rossetti with a manuscript index in his hand to front endpaper, ownership inscription his daughter Mary Elizabeth Madox Rossetti (dated 1919).
First edition, a presentation copy to ‘D. G. Rossetti with the Editor’s best regards Oct 23 1861’ of Whitley Stokes’s edition of the Middle-Cornish passion poem also known as ‘Mount Calvary’, published as an appendix to the Transactions of the Berlin Philological Society. President of the Law Commission of India, Stokes was also a pre-eminent Celtic scholar, and a friend of the Rossettis from around 1855. Dante Gabriel consulted his library and sought his opinion on his own work as well as his sister Christina’s. On his early death in 1882, the book passed to WMR and is thus inscribed.
Of similar medievalist interest is Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s copy of Fortunatus siculus, ascribed to the early fourteenth-century soldier (and admirer of Dante) Bosone da Gubbio (d. 1349?), edited by George Frederick Nott. Nott also worked with his father Gabriele Rossetti on an edition of the Book of Common Prayer in Italian issued by the SPCK.
The ‘Journal of an officer of the Swiss Guards’ was a translation by Henry F. Polydore, uncle of the Rossettis, of a supposedly eyewitness account of the French Revolution that had been given to his father Gaetano Polidori.
Other interesting contents in the volume include articles from Fraser’s Magazine by Thomas Love Peacock (‘Unpublished letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley’ (March, 1860), WMR (reviews of the Royal Academy Exhibitions of 1861–5, some imperfect), John Skelton (‘The Poems of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’, May 1870), and a negative review of the poetry of Swinburne, Morris and DGR (‘Novelties in Poetry and Criticism’, May 1872).
Stokes and Bosone are items and P3 and B8 in the manuscript list of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s books drawn up by William Michael Rossetti in c. 1866 (see Rossetti Archive online).