Ashley MS A1388*, A1389, A1392

Letters (4) from Dante Gabriel Rossetti to W. T. Watts[-Dunton]; Oct. 1877, [1877?], 4 April 1878. Among the subjects are the sale of pictures to Clarence Fry and Constantine Ionides (A1392), the value of Watts[-Dunton]'s friendship to Rossetti while the latter was recuperating at Hunter's Forestall in 1877 (A1388*), a possible printing of Rossetti's ballad 'Sister Helen', the completion of a 'ballad' [stated by Wise to be 'Sister Helen'] (A1389, ff. 15, 15b), and Rossetti's mistress, Fanny Cornforth. Also included (f. 12) is an autograph rough draft of two additional stanzas of 'Sister Helen', [1879?], written on one side only of an octavo leaf of white laid paper, without watermark, and corresponding to stanzas 33 and 34 of the version printed in Poems, 1881, the first in which these stanzas appeared. For a full account of the development of 'Sister Helen' see J. C. Troxell, Rossetti's "Sister Helen", 1939. Printed in O. Doughty and J. R. Wahl, Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, iv, 1967, pp. 1497, 1565, 1763, 1876. Ashley Library Catalogue, iv, pp. 112, 114.