Beschreibung:

BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT. Autograph manuscript of stanzas 1-13 (of 36, without the later stanza 7) of "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point" ("I stand on the mark, beside the shore, Of the first white pilgrim's bended knee; Where exile changed to ancestor..."), A WORKING MANUSCRIPT, with considerable, quite significant revisions in the text, WITH PENCILLED ANNOTATIONS BY ROBERT BROWNING (some 45 words) in the margin of four stanzas, bearing a deleted title, "Black & Mad, at Pilgrim's Point," n.d. [published 1848]. 4 pages, 8vo, 84 lines in 7 stanzas. [ With: ] BROWNING. The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point, London: Moxon 1849 [but 1888], 8vo, brown morocco gilt, printed buff paper wrapper bound in, by Riviere, front cover detached, A FORGERY BY THOMAS J. WISE, with the Moxon imprint (one impression had Chapman & Hall as publisher). Baylor University, Catalogue of the Browning Collection , ed. W. Barnes, 1966, EB16; William B. Todd, "A Handlist of Thomas J. Wise," in Thomas J. Wise: Centenary Studies , 1960, no.69f. AN EBB MANUSCRIPT WITH ANNOTATION BY RBB An important poetical manuscript, with very significant revisions and provocative annotations by Robert Browning comprising the first part of this extended poem. The stanzas are numbered 1-12 in pencil. "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point" was composed at the request of an American anti-slavery group and published in the collection The Liberty Bell, by Friends of Freedom , a volume of abolitionist writings. Robert Browning's annotations vividly illuminated the close interchange between the two poets. For example, alongside a line in stanza 7, which reads "Could the whippoorwill, or the stag of the glen" Browning writes: "could not some more characteristic creature be found - and smaller too, to pair with the whippoorwill? martin, racoon, opossum, wild cat &c..." The early draft represented by this manuscript survives in three sections: 1) Stanzas 1-13 (here numbered 1-12, without the later stanza 7), the present manuscript (Kelley and Coley, The Browning Collection: A Reconstruction , D800) 2) Stanzas 14-26, with one page annotated by Robert Browning in the Ashley Library in the British Library (Kelley and Coley D801, illustrated in The Ashley Library, I, following p. 100 and in Wise, A Bibliography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning , pp.89-92) 3) Stanzas 27-36, annotated by Robert Browning is in the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University (Kelley and Coley D802). Provenance : The Browning Collections (sale, Sotheby's, London, 1913, part of lot 124, purchased by Meynell) -- Roderick Terry, bookplate -- Lily Lambert Fleming (sale, Parke-Bernet, December 1953, lot 88), bookplate.