Some Additions to Phyllis B. Bartlett's Edition of The Poems of George Meredith

Abstract

Three holograph manuscript George Meredith poems and various holograph drafts now in the Sir Hugh Walpole Collection at the King's School, Canterbury, provide additions to Phyllis B. Bartlett's edition of The Poems of George Meredith, 2 vols. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978). Bartlett's editorial methodology is based upon a comparison of printed texts and extant manuscripts, and “much of the hitherto unpublished material included” in the edition “is taken from two notebooks now in the Beinecke Library at Yale” belonging to Meredith's early creative period (I, xxviii). The three poems, whose manuscripts are bound in half green morocco binding at the King's School, were published in the second posthumous book of Meredith's poems to appear in 1909, Last Poems (London: Constable). They are: “The years had worn their season's belt,” with several early drafts of the poem; “The Wild Rose,” with revisions; and “OnComo,” with revisions in which the last three lines differ from those published.