An outstanding Pre-Raphaelite association copy of the first volume of Rev. George Gilfillan’s Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets (1860) from the libraries of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his friend the Scottish Pre-Raphaelite painter and 14th Laird of Penkill Castle Alice Boyd, featuring DGR’s annotations (made in the last two years of his life). This copy was originally gifted (apparently with the other 44 volumes in Gilfillan’s The Library Edition of British Poet series) to the artist-poet by Boyd in 1880, then, following his death on Easter Sunday 1882 and the sale of his belongings from his London home later that summer, according to the memorial inscription (likely by Boyd?), bought by another friend, Henry Virtue Tebbs, and returned to Boyd at Penkill, “as a memento of the deceased poet
and Friend”. DGR’s correspondence (see below for details) confirms much of the memorial inscription and, in conjunction with the pencil annotations, suggests additionally that it was this volume “of Gilfillan’s British Poets [that DGR] used as a source for his ballad ‘The King’s Tragedy’” (Fredeman, Correspondence IX). DGR’s annotations begin proper on p. 34 with the ‘James I. Scotland’ section, including an abundance of asterisks and occasional pithy pencil notes, such as on p.38, the observation: “Fine subject for Ballad or Picture”. Drawing on both James I’s poem The King’s Quair, “portions of which DGR transliterated and worked into his ballad”, as well as the in/famous tale of the Scottish King’s murder, which Gilfillan included in his section introduction (for more on this see below), DGR’s ‘The King’s Tragedy’ joined his other freshly written ballads ‘Rose Mary’ and ‘The White Ship’ in his second and final collection of poetry, Ballads and Sonnets (1881). It is doubly apt that Tebbs, a lawyer and collector, who was on the fringes of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, returned this volume to Boyd, not only because it had originally been her gift, but also because DGR had been introduced to James I’s poem during his visits to Penkill via the murals that his close friend (and Boyd’s lover) the Scottish Pre-Raphaelite artist-poet William Bell Scott had created, in collaboration with Boyd, for the castle’s tower staircase, which were based on The King’s Quair (and used fellow Pre-Raphaelites as models, including DGR’s siblings Christina and William Michael; see also Bell Scott’s The King’s Quair folding screen in the Scottish Collection of the National Galleries of Scotland). Indeed, Jan Marsh tells us that Bell Scott’s murals (painted 1865-8) “inspired [DGR] to write his own ‘King’s Tragedy’” (Marsh, 1999). For further details, including DGR’s discussion of this volume in his correspondence, plus his marginalia to the John Donne section, do get in touch.