Wellesley College Library French H D (1 results)

Printed self-wrappers, 8vo, 23 cm, 27 pp. 100 entries. Scarce. A splendid association copy of the catalogue of a very interesting exhibition based upon Elizabeth Barrett Browning's famous love-poems to her husband, the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese'. It was the supposed discovery of an 1847 first edition of these poems, and the elaborate fairy-tale created by Thomas James Wise and Harry Buxton Forman to explain what was in reality their creative forgery, that first prompted John Carter and Graham Pollard to launch the investigation described in their 1934 "An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets' (an appendix contains their census of all known copies of the forgery, demonstrating the depth of their research). The book caused a sensation with its forensic demonstration that approaching 50 supposedly rare pamphlets of works by the Brownings, Keats, Morris, Ruskin, Shelley, Swinburne, Tennyson, Wordsworth, and others were either proven forgeries or very likely so. The exhibition catalogue includes many items illustrating the real origins of the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' as contrasted with the inventions of the forgers. John Carter's copy, signed and dated '1959' by him on the front wrapper. Good.