Add MS 45310-45316

WILLIAM MORRIS LITERARY MANUSCRIPTS. Vols XIV-XX. A series of note-books (45310-45315) and a collection of loose leaves (45316) containing drafts of the epic poem 'Sigurd the Volsung' (first published 1876; also C.W., vol. xii). There is also some material for and relating to Morris's translation of 'The Aeneids of Virgil' (see C.W., vol. xi) in 45310, 45311. These seven volumes, together with 37497-37498 (q.v.), contain the entire first draft of 'Sigurd the Volsung', written very roughly and hastily in pencil. The six note-books, 45310-45315, belonged in 1911 to Lady Burne-Jones (see C. W., xii, p. xxiv), but by 1936 they had come into the hands of May Morris together with the loose leaves, 45316 (see Morris, i, pp. 478-479). The differences between the first draft and the printed text increase as the work progresses, but a continuity can be made out in 45310-45315, which are numbered 1-6 by Morris. In 37497-37498 the draft is completed, but in a less continuous form and with rewritings of other portions interpolated. It seems clear, however, that these two MSS. have been mistakenly numbered, and that 37498 was written before 37497. The printer's fair copy of the whole poem is now Egerton MS. 2866. For an account of these MSS. of 'Sigurd the Volsung' and a comparison with the printed text see C. W., xii, pp. xxiv-xxx, and Morris, i, pp. 478-492, in both of which some previously unpublished passages are quoted. In his lecture No Idle Singer (Cape Town, 1964), Prof. J. R. Wahl gives a more detailed account of the MSS. and processes of composition of 'Sigurd the Volsung' (see especially footnotes 45, 47).