Details
ROSSETTI, Christina Georgina (1830-1894). Sing Song. A Nursery-Rhyme Book. London: George Routledge, 1872.
8° (181 x 134mm). With 120 wood-engraved illustrations by Arthur Hughes. Original green pictorial cloth (one leaf cut short at lower margin). Provenance: presentation copy from Christina Rossetti to her brother, Dante Gabriel (inscribed in her hand on front fly-leaf 'To Gabriel Dante Rossetti with love'). Exhibited: Grolier Club (exhibition label).
FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY FROM SISTER TO BROTHER. A rare copy of this collection of original nursery rhymes, written in a single creative impulse during the autumn of 1869. The style is both traditional and innovative by paying homage to earlier writers, but also giving original expression to new nursery images and figures. Rossetti made a conscious return to her own infancy, structuring her whole sequence of 120 pieces according to childhood experience. The title Sing-Song was suggested by her mother and the poems were written to be read aloud, to an imagined audience whose ages range from birth to about five years. Interestingly William M. Rossetti remarked that much of Sing-Song is 'truly in a high strain of poetry, and perfectly suited for figuring among her verse for adults.' The poems are dedicated 'without permission to the baby who inspired them,' perhaps a reference to the child Rossetti herself would never have.
Christina Rossetti was originally offered a publishing contract for Sing-Song, together with some stories entitled Commonplace and Other Short Stories, by her brother Gabriel's publisher, F.S. Ellis. The appearance of Commonplace coincided with Gabriel's Poems, which proved the sensation of the season, partly due to the sensation surrounding the famous 'lost poems' buried with the author's wife and subsequently exhumed. In contrast, the reception to Christina's work proved poor, leading her to offer to release Ellis from the contract to publish Sing-Song. Ellis, working to meet the growing demand for Gabriel's Poems, now in their third and fourth reprint, gladly took the opportunity to withdraw. Christina philosophically replied: 'We are not all D.G.Rs!' Marsh, pp. 372-392.
8° (181 x 134mm). With 120 wood-engraved illustrations by Arthur Hughes. Original green pictorial cloth (one leaf cut short at lower margin). Provenance: presentation copy from Christina Rossetti to her brother, Dante Gabriel (inscribed in her hand on front fly-leaf 'To Gabriel Dante Rossetti with love'). Exhibited: Grolier Club (exhibition label).
FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY FROM SISTER TO BROTHER. A rare copy of this collection of original nursery rhymes, written in a single creative impulse during the autumn of 1869. The style is both traditional and innovative by paying homage to earlier writers, but also giving original expression to new nursery images and figures. Rossetti made a conscious return to her own infancy, structuring her whole sequence of 120 pieces according to childhood experience. The title Sing-Song was suggested by her mother and the poems were written to be read aloud, to an imagined audience whose ages range from birth to about five years. Interestingly William M. Rossetti remarked that much of Sing-Song is 'truly in a high strain of poetry, and perfectly suited for figuring among her verse for adults.' The poems are dedicated 'without permission to the baby who inspired them,' perhaps a reference to the child Rossetti herself would never have.
Christina Rossetti was originally offered a publishing contract for Sing-Song, together with some stories entitled Commonplace and Other Short Stories, by her brother Gabriel's publisher, F.S. Ellis. The appearance of Commonplace coincided with Gabriel's Poems, which proved the sensation of the season, partly due to the sensation surrounding the famous 'lost poems' buried with the author's wife and subsequently exhumed. In contrast, the reception to Christina's work proved poor, leading her to offer to release Ellis from the contract to publish Sing-Song. Ellis, working to meet the growing demand for Gabriel's Poems, now in their third and fourth reprint, gladly took the opportunity to withdraw. Christina philosophically replied: 'We are not all D.G.Rs!' Marsh, pp. 372-392.
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