ABSTRACT

First publ. M & W, 10 Nov. 1855; repr. 1863 (when it was placed in ‘Lyrics’: see Appendix D, p. 747), 18652, 1868, 1872, 1888. There is a complete MS draft of the poem dated 18 Feb. 1853, which B. cut from his notebook and gave to Mrs Mary Ford on 18 March 1866; see Michael Meredith, ‘Foot Over the Threshold: Browning at Work’, BSN xxvi (May 2000), 49–50, and cp. headnote to Toccata (p. 264). Meredith rightly remarks on its importance as a very rare example of a working draft by B., as opposed to printers’ copies or autograph copies (distinguishing it even from the MSS of A Face: see headnote, p. 230). We give the complete text of this MS in Appendix C (pp. 741–2); only substantive variants are recorded in the notes.