en permanence

Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham

Monday [summer of 1861].

My Dear Allingham,

I am sending you by book post with this a sewed copy of my book. I have only just got a few, and do not offer it you en permanence in this state, as I am going to make an etching, or perhaps two, for it, and there is another index to come at the end, but had 6 copies sent me now to use in getting a publisher, etc. My first offer of it will be to Macmillan, with whom I have had some talk.

What I want chiefly to get rid of is the printer's bill, but I am led to think by some friends that I ought to expect something in money also. What think you? Will you tell me, and say all you have time to say in the way of criticism? Cancels are still possible. There are 5 cancel leaves already in the book (chiefly on score of decorum!), which you will notice by their being in the rough as yet.

My wife progresses well, I am glad to tell you. With her love to you, I am, yours affectionately,

D. G. R.

[Notes: "My Book " was The Early Italian Poets, now called Dante and his Circle. No etchings were included in it, though one was made, now in Mr. Fairfax Murray's collection. Macmillan did not publish the work, but Smith and Elder. For the ''something in money" which his friends led him to think he ought to expect he had to wait eight years. By 1869, about six hundred copies having been sold, he received, Mr. W. M. Rossetti says, "a minute dole of less than nine pounds."]

-from Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham, 1854-1870 by George Birkbeck Hill (London: T.F. Unwin, 1897). p. 260-61.