D.G. Rossetti's Privately Printed Hand and Soul

Front cover
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, HAND AND SOUL ([London: Privately printed for the author by Strangeways & Walden, November 1869]).  18 x 12cm [12mo], in original buff paper wraps w/printed title within a fine-ruled border to fr. cover, [1-3 (half-title; blank; title & text)] 4-22 (text, author's name & printer) [23-24 (blanks)] pp.  Provenance: J.O. Edwards, w/his label to fr. of protective envelope.  Binding Near-Fine (sl. soiled & spotted); contents Fine.  Slater p.216, Ashley IV 122, Fredeman 23.6 (see also 28.2, 28.22, & 30.12), Fennell pp.138-40, Colbeck 8.  (Inv. #886)  C$3,500

    On 3 Dec. 1869 Rossetti wrote to William Davies: "I send you with this a little tale written long ago.  I had included it among the poems I am printing, as it is really more a sort of poem than anything else; but coming to the conclusion after all that it looked awkward there I have had a few copies struck off to give away.  I send one for [James] Smetham too when you see him" (WMR, Rossetti Papers, p.492).  T.J. Wise claimed, without authority, that 100 copies were printed, a figure which disagrees with Rossetti's "a few copies" & Colbeck's "a small unspecified number."

    Rossetti "caused various copies of Hand and Soul to be done up in a drab wrapper; and he gave some of them away, but never sold them.  These copies appear to be the same printing as in the Poems privately printed; but the pagination is altered, and runs from p. 1 to 22, and at the close is printed 'Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1850'.  From time to time copies ... in this form have turned up for sale, and have commanded high prices" (Rossetti 1905, p.17).  "Hand and Soul" was originally published in the 1st number of The Germ, & after this pamphlet was printed it appeared in the Fortnightly Review (Dec. 1870, pp.692-701).  For additional information click here and here.




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