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Elizabeth Barrett Browning Poems Before Congress an important autograph manuscript
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning Poems Before Congress an important autograph manuscript
拍品描述：
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
An important working draft ofPoems Before Congress, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s final and most controversial work.N.p., circa 1860.[Bound with:] Poems before Congress.London, Chapman and Hall, 1860.First edition.
8vo (175 x 110 mm), 56-page autograph manuscript in ink and pencil (including 1 blank page), with later 2-page manuscript title and contents list noting, “also drafts of other poems which may be unpublished," each manuscript leaf tipped on to a stub; occasional soiling and faint marginal toning, minor wear, creasing, and a few short tears along the leaf edges and at corners. Full red Morocco by Riviere and Son, cover and spine gilt-lettered, covers, spine, and turn-ins decorated in gilt; rubbing along the joints, the front joint starting at tail, two scuffs to boards, instance of minor restoration.
A heavily revised draft and a print copy of the first edition ofPoems Before CongressElizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)—her most controversial work, and the last published during her lifetime.
InPoems Before Congress, Barrett Browning deals exclusively with current events, expressing her strong opinions about Italian politics, Napoleon III, and slavery. Writing topically, she boldly asserts her right to express political opinions in her poetry. This shocked her Victorian contemporaries, who did not expect to read controversial poems by a woman. The book was roundly criticized in the English press, damaging her reputation in the year prior to her death. Over a century later, after Barrett Browning's oeuvre was “rediscovered” and reevaluated by literary critics, it is apparent thatPoems Before Congressexemplifies many of the aspects for which Barrett Browning is now justly celebrated—the willingness to challenge prevailing stereotypes, an unprecedented and passionate interest in politics, and her fearless outspokenness.
This autograph manuscript, written in her cramped, oftentimes untidy hand, includes all eight poems from the book: "Napoleon III in Italy," "A Tale of Villafranca, "Italy and the World," "A Court Lady," "Christmas Gifts," "An August Voice," "The Dance," and "The Curse of a Nation." The extent of her revisions to the poems is apparent when comparing the manuscript of “A Court Lady” with the printed text. To quote just one of the many changes, she ends the stanza XXVI in the manuscript with: “In noble Piedmont refusing Hell to be noble alone.” The printed version reads instead: “In noble, noble Piedmont, who would not be noble alone.” The manuscript also contains a note in a later hand on the title leaf suggesting that it contains drafts of unpublished poems. We note that the final poem in the manuscript, titled “Blow a blast through the thick [?sp?] of Gehenna,” appears to be an unpublished work that thematically relates to her 1845 collection of poems,A Drama of Exile.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband, the poet Robert Browning, moved from London to Florence in 1846. As such, when she wrotePoems Before Congress,she was already a longtime resident in Italy. In 1859, Italy was caught in the middle of the Second Italian War of Independence. Barrett Browning explains in her preface that “these poems were written under pressure of the events they indicate” (p. v). In fact, seven out of the eight poems in the book deal with Italian current events. In them, Barrett Browning expresses her ardent support for Italian independence and criticizes Britain’s indifference to the Italian cause. She defends her position in the preface, writing: “If the verses should appear to English readers too pungently rendered to admit of a patriotic respect to the English sense of things, I will not excuse myself… What I have written has simply been written because I love truth and justicequand meme” (p. v).
In the "Curse of a Nation," the final poem in the collection and the only one not about Italy, Browning staunchly denounces slavery as unjust and immoral. The poem was misunderstood by certain reviewers who claimed that it was yet another unpatriotic critique of England, though its subject is clearly the United States. In a letter to her sister Arabella, dated 11 June 1860, she writes, “people in England universally admired my ‘pluck’ (meaning impudence, I suppose), while they revile my politics.” Barrett Browning clearly anticipated the criticism that she received for her poems divisive subject matter. She ends her preface with a dream of a more compassionate England, whose politicians would care more about helping humanity than about the nation’s profits, “and poets who write of the events of that time shall not need to justify themselves in prefaces, for ever so little jarring of the national sentiment, imputable to their rhythms” (p. viii).
Another manuscript ofPoems Before Congress, comprising 47 leaves written on one side of the paper only, isheld at the Harry Ransom Center.
REFERENCE:
Kelley, Philip & Betty A. Coley. The Browning Collections… Winfield, Kansas: The Wedgestone Press, 1984; Barnes, Walter. Austin, Texas: University of Texas and Baylor University, 1967; Barnes, Warnes. Catalogue of the Browning Collection. Austin, Texas: The University of Texas, 1966; Baylor University Libraries Digital Collections. The Browning Letters. https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/abl-collections/the-browning-letters
PROVENANCE:
Col. Robert R. Gimbel Family Collection (their sale, Sotheby's New York, 18 June 1987)
An important working draft ofPoems Before Congress, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s final and most controversial work.N.p., circa 1860.[Bound with:] Poems before Congress.London, Chapman and Hall, 1860.First edition.
8vo (175 x 110 mm), 56-page autograph manuscript in ink and pencil (including 1 blank page), with later 2-page manuscript title and contents list noting, “also drafts of other poems which may be unpublished," each manuscript leaf tipped on to a stub; occasional soiling and faint marginal toning, minor wear, creasing, and a few short tears along the leaf edges and at corners. Full red Morocco by Riviere and Son, cover and spine gilt-lettered, covers, spine, and turn-ins decorated in gilt; rubbing along the joints, the front joint starting at tail, two scuffs to boards, instance of minor restoration.
A heavily revised draft and a print copy of the first edition ofPoems Before CongressElizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)—her most controversial work, and the last published during her lifetime.
InPoems Before Congress, Barrett Browning deals exclusively with current events, expressing her strong opinions about Italian politics, Napoleon III, and slavery. Writing topically, she boldly asserts her right to express political opinions in her poetry. This shocked her Victorian contemporaries, who did not expect to read controversial poems by a woman. The book was roundly criticized in the English press, damaging her reputation in the year prior to her death. Over a century later, after Barrett Browning's oeuvre was “rediscovered” and reevaluated by literary critics, it is apparent thatPoems Before Congressexemplifies many of the aspects for which Barrett Browning is now justly celebrated—the willingness to challenge prevailing stereotypes, an unprecedented and passionate interest in politics, and her fearless outspokenness.
This autograph manuscript, written in her cramped, oftentimes untidy hand, includes all eight poems from the book: "Napoleon III in Italy," "A Tale of Villafranca, "Italy and the World," "A Court Lady," "Christmas Gifts," "An August Voice," "The Dance," and "The Curse of a Nation." The extent of her revisions to the poems is apparent when comparing the manuscript of “A Court Lady” with the printed text. To quote just one of the many changes, she ends the stanza XXVI in the manuscript with: “In noble Piedmont refusing Hell to be noble alone.” The printed version reads instead: “In noble, noble Piedmont, who would not be noble alone.” The manuscript also contains a note in a later hand on the title leaf suggesting that it contains drafts of unpublished poems. We note that the final poem in the manuscript, titled “Blow a blast through the thick [?sp?] of Gehenna,” appears to be an unpublished work that thematically relates to her 1845 collection of poems,A Drama of Exile.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband, the poet Robert Browning, moved from London to Florence in 1846. As such, when she wrotePoems Before Congress,she was already a longtime resident in Italy. In 1859, Italy was caught in the middle of the Second Italian War of Independence. Barrett Browning explains in her preface that “these poems were written under pressure of the events they indicate” (p. v). In fact, seven out of the eight poems in the book deal with Italian current events. In them, Barrett Browning expresses her ardent support for Italian independence and criticizes Britain’s indifference to the Italian cause. She defends her position in the preface, writing: “If the verses should appear to English readers too pungently rendered to admit of a patriotic respect to the English sense of things, I will not excuse myself… What I have written has simply been written because I love truth and justicequand meme” (p. v).
In the "Curse of a Nation," the final poem in the collection and the only one not about Italy, Browning staunchly denounces slavery as unjust and immoral. The poem was misunderstood by certain reviewers who claimed that it was yet another unpatriotic critique of England, though its subject is clearly the United States. In a letter to her sister Arabella, dated 11 June 1860, she writes, “people in England universally admired my ‘pluck’ (meaning impudence, I suppose), while they revile my politics.” Barrett Browning clearly anticipated the criticism that she received for her poems divisive subject matter. She ends her preface with a dream of a more compassionate England, whose politicians would care more about helping humanity than about the nation’s profits, “and poets who write of the events of that time shall not need to justify themselves in prefaces, for ever so little jarring of the national sentiment, imputable to their rhythms” (p. viii).
Another manuscript ofPoems Before Congress, comprising 47 leaves written on one side of the paper only, isheld at the Harry Ransom Center.
REFERENCE:
Kelley, Philip & Betty A. Coley. The Browning Collections… Winfield, Kansas: The Wedgestone Press, 1984; Barnes, Walter. Austin, Texas: University of Texas and Baylor University, 1967; Barnes, Warnes. Catalogue of the Browning Collection. Austin, Texas: The University of Texas, 1966; Baylor University Libraries Digital Collections. The Browning Letters. https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/abl-collections/the-browning-letters
PROVENANCE:
Col. Robert R. Gimbel Family Collection (their sale, Sotheby's New York, 18 June 1987)