Beschreibung:

BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT. Autograph manuscript signed ("Elizabeth Barrett Browning") of her 10-stanza poem "De Profundis" ("The face, which duly as the sun, Rose up for me with life begun..."), n.p. [Italy, n.d. [1860?]. 5 pages, 8vo, written in brown ink on rectos only, titled at top "De Profundis," tipped into a bound volume with the following items -- BROWNING. Autograph letter signed to "My dear Mrs. Howard," Villa Alberti, Siena, 14 August, n.y. [1860?], 6 pages, 16mo, acknowledging news of the death of Annie Howard and offering reflective Christian solace: "I receive your letter, read it, hold it in my hands, with a sympathy deeply moved. No, we had not heard of your loss, yes, we well remember that lovely & radiant creature, called up 'higher' so early in the day -- yes, yes, yes, I understand what it must be for you to stand below and see her go...Hearing of such things makes us silent before God..." She goes on to thank her ("& how my husband thanks you") for "your valuable gifts...thoughts from the teachings of Mr. [Henry Ward] Beecher. We will read them faithfully...& keep them in remembrance of you - and yours - as we saw you in Rome..." She adds that "it moves me...that my poems have been worth a little to you at your need." She mentions Mr. Beecher and comments that "of dear Mrs. Stowe I have not heards since we parted at Rome and I was over shy to say 'write.' -- BROWNING. Autograph letter signed to the same, 126 Via Felice, Rome, 12 March n.y. [1860?], 4 pages, 8vo , noting that she has received a letter from Mrs. Stowe. Before then, the pain for Annie expressed in a sermon of Mr. Beecher's had reminded me of an old forgotten ms. of mine ('De Profundis, written in my earlier manner' say the critics...) and I sent it for printing in the Independent --That was for you ... & not for me - yet by the time it was printed & came out here, some of it sailed me also thro' a new trial...How the threads cross. And I, in my life, have suffered many losses. I look trembling sometimes at my husband & my child...Dear Mrs. Howard, when the young go away with hands full of unblown roses, who should lament that they did not stay to sit under leafless trees..." She thanks Mrs. Howard for "the photograph [of Annie Howard?], which I shall value so much..." --STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER. Autograph manuscript signed ("Harriet Beecher Stowe"), of her 10-stanza poem "To the Memory of Annie, who Died at Milan, June 6, 1860" ("In the fair garden of celestial peace..."), n.p., dated at end 1 July 1889, 3 pages, 8vo, written on rectos only, titled at head.; Together four manuscripts, all neatly tipped into a volume, 8vo, late nineteenth-century dark blue morocco gilt, t.e.g. including a cabinet card and an albumen photograph of a portrait of Annie Howard after an unnamed artist, a printed version of Browning's "De Profundis," and a typewritten copy of a eulogy on Howard by Henry Ward Beecher extracted from his Royal Truths . E.B.B.'S "DE PROFUNDIS": AN UNRECORDED MANUSCRIPT A touching collection of verse tributes to Annie Howard a young American who had met the Brownings in Rome and then died unexpectedly in Milan. Miss Howard's untimely death was memorialized by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher and E.B.B. While her verses may have been written at an earlier date, it was clearly Annie's death which prompted Browning to submit the poem, as she recounts, to the New York Independent , where it was first published on 6 September 1860, entitled "The Despair & Rebuke." A fair copy manuscript under that title was sold in 1936 (present whereabouts unknown) and a fair copy with revisions is part of the E.B.B. manuscript collection of "Last Poems," at the Beinecke Library, Yale University (see Coley & Kelley, The Browning Collections , D183 & 184). The present previously unrecorded fair copy, concurrent in date with the Independent publication, is clearly the fair copy made by Browning and sent to the mother and family of Annie Howard at t