STEPHENS, FREDERIC GEORGE. Autograph manuscript signed of the essay (written in the form of a letter) attacking William Holman Hunt's autobiography Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (London, 1905-1906). London [late 1905]. 7 1/2 pages, 4to, written in ink, with revisions, on the rectos of 8 sheets, signed at end by Stephens. A shorter version of this manuscript appeared as a letter to the Times, 16 February 1906; the full text was printed in a four-page pamphlet privately issued by Stephens (a photocopy of which is present), also in 1906 (Fredeman 39.1 and 77.4).
In this important manuscript Stephens, one of the seven original members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, answers Hunt's "statements about Pre-Raphaelitism and his rejection of Stephens and William Michael Rossetti as PRB's of the original strain" (Fredeman 77.4). Stephens writes in his conclusion: "...The fact is that the coming together of the Brotherhood, of which our autobiographer [Holman Hunt] makes more fuss than anyone else has cared to do, was, so to say, simply the point of crystallization at which seven young men whose convictions concerning ethics and art coalesed. Mr. W.M. Rossetti and I did our best to give ecffect to these convictions by means of our pens. D.G. Rossetti, and, for a time, [John Everett] Millais, [Thomas] Woolner and Mr. Hunt, chose other means, and throve greatly in so doing.
"Finally, I think it my duty as one of a circle far larger than the P.R.B., most of the other members of which are now, Alas! dead, to protest in the most emphatic manner against the ungenerous and egostical spirit displayed by Mr. Hunt when treating of some of the opinions and conduct of some comrades of his and mine who loved and helped him during many a year, including [Ford] Madox Brown, the brothers Rossetti, Woolner, and others hardly less distinguished than they." Stephens's pamphlet, which Hunt never saw, was discussed in the revised, second edition of Hunt's book, 1913. Stephens died in 1907; Hunt, three years later.