Letter from Lord Coleridge, Warwick, to William Angus Knight, 1884 November 18 : autograph manuscript signed.

Concerning the publication rights to Coleridge's letters and referring to several legal cases related to the publication rights of letters; citing the Lytton case and cases involving the publication of the letters of Pope, Lord Dudley and the letters from S.T. Coleridge to James Godwin in which Lord Coleridge says "...I myself restrained Mr. Garnett from publishing Coleridge's to Godwin. The law is perfectly plain & always has been & it would be a very hard [illegible] on literary men if it were otherwise;" saying, in reply to Knight's last letter, "It chances that I myself under family arrangements am the legal owner of all the S.T.C. copyrights but of course I act in these matters with the cooperation of those for whom I am Trustee. There are now the 3 surviving grandchildren of S.T.C. two of them Derwent's children & one the child of Sara Coleridge who married my uncle her own first cousin. I have sent your letter to Ernest Coleridge & when I hear from him I will let you know. Personally & quite between ourselves I will own that I regret the channel you have selected for conveying them to the world, but it is too late now to make any change in this respect. I do not apprehend there will be any difficulty about the copyright as far as you are concerned; but you will feel I am sure that the publication of letters in driblets - now the correspondence with A - now with B - now with C - is not the best way for the author & it renders the collection of the letters as a whole increasingly difficult. However with a careless man who left no record of his letters I do not, I own, see how this is possibly to be avoided. You are very good as to what you say of my paper - The last volumes of Transactions I thought most interesting though I don't at all like Lowell's tone about Wordsworth - He is consistent no doubt as he said the same thing very much in the same way many years ago in an Essay published in his Works. For my own paper I am really desirous to write it. But you may know or may not know that I am just now the prey of domestic troubles & anxieties which the moment I am out of the actual work of my Office fill my mind & [illegible] me from all connected thinking - or reading - or writing - God only knows if the clouds will ever [illegible] - If ever they do I shall hope for the few years which are left to do many things or some things which interest me. But while the vale before me is full of clouds I am unable to look forward."