Blue morrocco, gilt, decorated volume 22 × 28.5 cm; on spine,  RUSKIN. / MS. POEMS AND LETTERS. J.R. / ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, FRANCE, SWITZERLAND. / 1827-44  1847-51  1859 / BOUND. 1924. 
	Originally, according to Collingwood, MS XI was  an envelope containing collected loose papers, including poems; fair-copied by the author as presents, chiefly to his father; or copied by others  (Works 2:534). By the time the second volume of the Library Edition was published (1903), the  loose papers,   together with some others,  had been  bound up in a volume of letters and poems, 1827-44  (Works 2:534). This binding, according to the date stamped on the spine of five other blue morrocco volumes, was done in 1889. Since Collingwood’s Poems was published in 1891, the letters cannot have lain loose in an  envelope  for very long after he described MS XI.
	Why, then, is the volume of the early letters stamped on the spine as bound in 1924? According to the bibliography volume (1912) of the Library Edition, when the Works were completed, there were  at Brantwood some seven bound quarto volumes of letters from Ruskin to his parents,  of which the first was the 1827-44 volume described in the second volume. When the volumes of letters were sold at Sotheby’s on 24 July 1930, however, Lot 110 consisted of only six volumes. The discrepancy is explained, if rather obscurely, by a  NOTE  on a front endpaper of the present first volume.

In the Library Edition of Ruskin (Vol. 38. p. 205) the contents of this volume are catalogued as two volumes, viz. (i) 1827-1844 and (iii) 1847-1851. This is because at the time of the catalogue the volumes were separately bound together in one volume.
	The lettes of 1859 at the end of this volume should have been placed in the volume more appropriate to their date, but were overlooked when that volume was bound.
December, 1924.

In 1924 it was decided to disassemble the bindings of the original first and third volumes and rebind them together. This is apparently all that is meant by the awkward phrase  separately bound together in one volume.  The redisposition of the volumes’ contents is clarified by comparing the bibliography list of 1912 with what is stamped on the spines of the volumes currently at Yale (the bindings were never stamped with volume numbers but only with the dates of their contents):

1912 (Works, 38:205)	     1924 and afterward
vol. 1: 1827-44       vol. 1: 1827-44, 1847-51, 1859 (bd. 1924)
vol. 2: 1845     vol. 2: 1845-50 (bd. 1889)
vol. 3: 1847-48-49-50-51	
vol. 4: 1851-52      vol. 3: 1851-52 (bd. 1889)
vol. 5: 1853    vol. 4: 1853 (bd. 1889)
vol. 6: 1857-58-59-61    vol. 5: 1858-61, 1867 (bd. 1889)
vol. 7: 1862-63      vol. 6: 1862-63 (bd. 1889)

First, it is clear that the present first volume holds the original volumes 1 and 3, as well as 1859 letters that apparently had never been bound prior to 1924. This disposition is confirmed by the volume still containing a typescript table of contents for the 1827-44 letters and poems, a typescript that differs markedly from a handwritten table of contents for the 1847-51 letters and from a page divider (no table of contents) for 1859. Presumably, the typescript and holograph tables of contents date from their original respective volumes.
	As for the other slight discrepancies between the two lists, they seem unlikely to have arisen from any actual redisposition of the contents of the original volumes 2 and 4-7 after 1889. Regarding volume 2, the Library Edition list fails to mention letters after 1845 though 1850, because, I imagine, those letters are from John James to Ruskin and not  from Ruskin to his parents  (Works, 38:205)--Ruskin’s authorship apparently being the editors’ primary concern at that point. The same explanation may be given for the failure of the Library Edition list to mention letters of 1867 in volume 6 (now volume 5): the 1867 letters are to Ruskin from his mother, not the reverse. Finally, the mismatch regarding that same volume’s 1857 correspondence can be explained by the Library Edition’s providing the greater accuracy, for once: that volume contains only a few 1857 letters, as compared to the much more substantial collection of 1858-61, as identified on the spine.
	Only the first of the blue morrocco volumes, of course, should be identified as MS XI--and, strictly, only the 1827-44 section of that volume, as presently bound. Although we can never know precisely what was contained in Collingwood’s  envelope,  nothing appears to have been lost since Cook and Wedderburn described the first binding of these letters (see Works 2:534, although this list omits prose letters). Moreover, assuming the typescript table of contents for the 1827-44 section to be the original, one finds it to correspond to all manuscripts presently extant in that section. The 1827-44 letters and poems form a core source for RFL, where the present blue morrocco volume 1 is called  RMS I. 
	It may be mentioned here that the 1924 rebinding of the original volumes 1 and 3 matches the 1889 bindings. The five 1889 bindings are all the same blue morrocco, gilt, and decorated (only more worn than the 1924 rebinding), and 22 × 28.5 cm. All have written in pencil on their front endpapers,  To be given to Mrs Arthur Severn in event of my death / AW.,  so they must have been for some time in the possession of Alexander Wedderburn. Brief descriptions of volumes 2-6 follow. (I have not compared the volumes’ contents, letter by letter, against editions of the letters in question, and I have not attempted to be thorough regarding publication history. Many of the letters in these volumes, of course, were first published in Works; Collingwood, Life; and Cook, Life):
	Vol. 2: on spine,  RUSKIN. / MS LETTERS. J.R.  J.J.R. (M.R.) / N. ITALY. PISA, FLORENCE, VENICE, &C. / 1845.-50. / BOUND. 1889.   This volume is important to this bibliography as forming a source of one letter for RFL, where the volume is called  RMS II.  Namely, the volume holds John James’s letter to Margaret, 9 March 1831, a letter that includes John James’s own verse (RFL 238-41); however, most of John James’s letters in this volume are beyond the scope of RFL. Most of the contents of this volume are published as Ruskin in Italy: Letters To His Parents, 1845, ed. Harold I. Shapiro (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972).
	Vol. 3: on spine,  RUSKIN. / MS LETTERS. J.R. / VENICE, ETC. / 1851.-1852. / BOUND. 1889.   The contents of this volume are published as Ruskin’s Letters from Venice, 1851-1852, ed. John Lewis Bradley (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955).
	Vol. 4: on spine,  RUSKIN. / MS LETTERS. J.R. / SCOTLAND. / 1853. / BOUND. 1889.  This contains, in addition to letters to his parents, three of Ruskin’s letters to Miss Mitford (1854?).
	Vol. 5: on spine,  RUSKIN. / MS LETTERS. J.R. (M.R.) / SWITZERLAND, N. ITALY. BOULOGNE, IRELAND, BONNEVILLE, LUCERNE. / 1858.-1861. (1867.) / BOUND. 1889.   This volume is the main source for John Ruskin, Letters from the Continent, 1858, ed. John Hayman (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 1982), and an important source for The Winnington Letters: John Ruskin’s Correspondence with Margaret Alexis Bell and the Children of Winnington Hall, ed. Van Akin Burd (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969). As mentioned earlier, this volume also holds letters to Ruskin from his mother of 1867, and there is one of 1864.
	Vol. 6: on spine,  RUSKIN. / MS LETTERS. J.R. / LUCERNE, MILAN, MORNEX, GENEVA, ANNECY. WINNINGTON. CHAMOUNI, GENEVA. WINNINGTON. / 1862.-1863. / BOUND. 1889.  In addition to the pencil note by Wedderburn directing what should be done with the volume in the event of his death, vol. 6 has a note in ink on a front endpaper:  The letters in this volume were given by Mr Ruskin to A. Wedderburn, & arranged by him in this book, which was deposited at Brantwood, after Mr Ruskin’s death, by arrangement with Mrs Severn. / A. Wedderburn / Oct. 1900.  If  him  refers to Ruskin, only this volume testifies to the author’s own hand in its arrangement.
	The contents of this volume are an important source for The Winnington Letters: John Ruskin’s Correspondence with Margaret Alexis Bell and the Children of Winnington Hall, ed. Van Akin Burd (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969).