Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- VOLUME I
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- The principles of this edition
- Family tree
- General introduction
- 1 Memoir by Alice Street, including diaries and letters to 1855
- 2 Letters and diaries 1855
- 3 Letters and diaries 1856
- 4 Letters and diaries 1857
- 5 Letters and diaries 1858
- 6 Letters and diaries 1859
- 7 Letters and diaries 1860
- 8 Letters and diaries 1861
- 9 Epilogue: 1862 onwards
- VOLUME II
- 10 Essays by Alice Street
- 11 The reviews
- G. P. Boyce’s Diaries 1848–1875
- APPENDICES
- Bibliography
- Index
The principles of this edition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- VOLUME I
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- The principles of this edition
- Family tree
- General introduction
- 1 Memoir by Alice Street, including diaries and letters to 1855
- 2 Letters and diaries 1855
- 3 Letters and diaries 1856
- 4 Letters and diaries 1857
- 5 Letters and diaries 1858
- 6 Letters and diaries 1859
- 7 Letters and diaries 1860
- 8 Letters and diaries 1861
- 9 Epilogue: 1862 onwards
- VOLUME II
- 10 Essays by Alice Street
- 11 The reviews
- G. P. Boyce’s Diaries 1848–1875
- APPENDICES
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In 2010 it was felt that the best way to introduce Joanna Mary Boyce, George Price Boyce and Henry Tanworth Wells to a new public was to publish a group biography based as far as possible on their letters and diaries. Joanna, George and Henry: A Pre-Raphaelite Tale of Art, Love and Friendshipwas published in 2012 and, we hope, awakened new interest in these relatively unknown artists. The Boyce Papers, comprising the complete Letters and Diaries of Joanna Mary Boyce, George Price Boyce and Henry Tanworth Wells, provide a much more comprehensive, though no less vivid, entertaining and informative picture.
The background to The Boyce Papers is described in the General Introduction, but it is important to bear in mind that everything that survives is second-hand. The Boyce Papers exist only as a typescript, made in the 1930s and 1940s by Alice Street, elder daughter of Joanna and Henry, and even this typescript was retyped at some point after 1944.
The key to the book as a whole lies in Alice's Memoir, which exists in three recensions. The longest and final version, referred to henceforth as the Memoir, forms the first section of this book. It represents Alice's most comprehensive attempt to tell the story, using the letters and diaries to do so. The shorter version, which we have called the Short Memoir, exists in two copies with minor variations and one brief handwritten survival. It includes much of the material included in the main Memoir, sometimes rearranged and sometimes plucked from elsewhere in the text, so to avoid repetition we have aimed, in our shorter version, to include the material not included by Alice in the main Memoir, together with those variations which we feel throw additional light on the story.
Reading all the versions, it would appear that Alice's aim in the earlier ones was to include the letters and diaries as illustrations to her narrative. By the time she drafted her final version, however, her faith in the original letters and diaries seems to have taken over and the final Memoir is designed to provide a comprehensive commentary on all the available material up to September 1855. When Joanna and George Boyce were young, this was relatively sparse in any case, but as their correspondence burgeons, Alice increasingly allows Joanna, George and Henry to speak for themselves.
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- Information
- The Boyce Papers , pp. xi - xiiiPublisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2019