Christina Rossetti Bookplate  

The Library has recently received from Mary Louise Maser and Frederick E. Maser an addition to their manuscript collection of the English poet Christina Rossetti, originally donated in 1991. Rossetti is considered by many to be the greatest female poet in English literature. This addition by the Masers, which is a deposit in the process of becoming a gift, is twice the size of the original manuscript collection.

The collection was formed by Mackenzie Bell during his work on Christina Rossetti: A Biographical and Critical Study, which was published in 1898. Rossetti’s brother, the literary critic and editor of the Germ, William Michael Rossetti, provided Bell with handwritten information about Christina and the Rossetti family, along with notes and comments about Bell’s drafts of the book. In 1896, William Michael also presented to Bell some of his sister’s letters. Because Bell made a list of these letters, it is possible to identify them in the collection.

Bell borrowed from Rossetti’s friend, Mrs. C. M. Gemmer, Rossetti’s letters to her, as referenced in the carbons of Bell’s outgoing letters to Gemmer in 1903. In one of Gemmer’s letters to Bell, she urges him to keep the Rossetti letters, stating that she is of “a great age now; 82 and have no further use for them.” Bell had made transcriptions of the Rossetti letters while working on his book, and some of these transcriptions are annotated, probably by English bibliographer Thomas J. Wise, who was working on an appendix to Bell’s book.

The remainder of the materials in the collection were purchased by Bell, and we are fortunate to have in the collection a short account of this purchase, written by Bell on 4 January 1898. Bell explains that he had attended a party on 31 December 1897 given by the English illustrator Walter Crane, and was talking to one of the guests about his Rossetti biography. The guest told him that the bookseller Frederick H. Hutt was selling various Rossetti letters that Hutt had obtained from an unknown man. Bell had a hunch that the man was probably William J. Bryant, who had served as literary secretary for Bell’s book on Charles Whitehead, published in 1894. The next day, Bell visited Hutt, who confirmed that the letters had been sold to him by Bryant. In Bell’s written account of this meeting, Bell remarks that he then “purchased all the remaining stock of Christina Rossetti’s handwriting.” The collection now at Bryn Mawr contains these items, including six letters from Rossetti to Bryant and his wife in 1892 regarding their financial misfortune.

Some of the letters and documents in the collection have the signatures cut out, which was apparently done by Bell, according to notes that he made on one of his lists of Rossetti letters: “autographs cut off & sent to the Dean of Canterbury and Mr. Fagan of the British Museum of Natural History, S[ou]th Kensington, at their request.” Rossetti’s common practice of not dating her letters, but marking them only with the day of the week, might have proved problematic to scholars except that the collection includes most of the postmarked envelopes in which Rossetti’s letters were sent. Through the use of a perpetual calendar, dates have been assigned to the letters. There are some letters that do not have envelopes, but many of these have been marked with a date either by Mackenzie Bell or by William Michael Rossetti.

The letters by Christina Rossetti in this collection span the years 1870 to 1894. There are three letters in 1894 to Bell himself, thanking him for his letters and expressions of sympathy on the death of her mother; Bell’s side of the correspondence is represented as well by carbons of his letters to her. Other correspondence by Rossetti includes eight letters to John H. Ingram in 1883 regarding her research for a biography of Ann Radcliffe; an undated letter to Theophilus Marzials, giving him permission to set one of her poems to music; and a letter to Arthur Symons in 1891 commenting on proofs that he had sent her, probably of an article about her writings. The largest group of Rossetti letters consists of the aforementioned thirty-two letters to her friend, Mrs. C. M. Gemmer, from 1870 to 1893, in which Rossetti discusses her writing, reading, family, and friends. Other letters in the collection to various friends and acquaintances touch on similar themes, especially mentioning her life with her mother. One 1883 letter to an unidentified recipient describes her mother’s plans for a grave and memorial window for Christina Rossetti’s brother, the Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

There are a number of letters from Rossetti to family members, discussing visits and family news, and relaying messages from her mother. These letters are addressed to her brothers, Dante Gabriel and William Michael, and to William Michael’s wife, Lucy, who was the daughter of the English painter Ford Madox Brown. There is also a letter from Brown to his daughter. On the side of the Rossetti family, there are a few letters from Dante Gabriel to various recipients about visits and about his work, as well as a check made out by him to “Queen’s taxes.” There are two letters from Christina Rossetti’s sister, Maria Francesca Rossetti, one to an unidentified recipient discussing a child’s studies, and one to Miss Wynne Jones about an autograph collection. The only printed item in this addition is also by Maria Francesca: a pamphlet entitled The Rivulets; A Dream Not All a Dream, published in 1846.

Because the Maser’s addition to the Rossetti collection was formed by Rossetti’s biographer, it presents scholars with a detailed picture of her life both at work and at home, as well as shedding light on the research and writing of Bell’s book on Rossetti.