BIB_ID
211663
Accession number
MA 1857.8
Creator
Coleridge, John Taylor, Sir, 1790-1876.
Display Date
England, 1818 July?.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 18.4 x 11.4 cm
Notes
This collection, MA 1857, includes seventeen autograph letters signed from various correspondents to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, three autograph letters signed to Robert Southey, one each from Edward Coleridge, John Taylor Coleridge and Sara Fricker Coleridge and two autograph letters signed from William Wordsworth, one to Robert Southey and one to Joseph Henry Green. This collection of letters dates from 1794-1834.
This letter is from the Joanna Langlais Collection, a large collection of letters written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to various recipients. The collection has been divided into subsets, based primarily on Coleridge's addressees, and these sub-collections have been cataloged individually as MA 1848- MA 1857.
John Taylor Coleridge was a nephew of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the 2nd son of S.T. Coleridge's brother James.
The likely date of writing of this letter is from Coleridge's reference to his impending marriage. In this letter Coleridge mentions that he will be married in early August and that by the time this letter reaches Southey he will likely already be married. It is likely this letter was written late in July, 1818. J.T. Coleridge married Mary Buchanan (1788-1874) on August 7, 1818. Southey's reply to this letter is dated September 8, 1818.
This letter is from the Joanna Langlais Collection, a large collection of letters written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to various recipients. The collection has been divided into subsets, based primarily on Coleridge's addressees, and these sub-collections have been cataloged individually as MA 1848- MA 1857.
John Taylor Coleridge was a nephew of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the 2nd son of S.T. Coleridge's brother James.
The likely date of writing of this letter is from Coleridge's reference to his impending marriage. In this letter Coleridge mentions that he will be married in early August and that by the time this letter reaches Southey he will likely already be married. It is likely this letter was written late in July, 1818. J.T. Coleridge married Mary Buchanan (1788-1874) on August 7, 1818. Southey's reply to this letter is dated September 8, 1818.
Provenance
Purchased from Joanna Langlais in 1957 as a gift of the Fellows with the special assistance of Mrs. W. Murray Crane, Mr. Homer D. Crotty, Mr. and Mrs. Donald F. Hyde, Mr. Robert H. Taylor and Mrs. Landon K. Thorne. Formerly in the possession of Ernest Hartley Coleridge and Thomas Burdett Money-Coutts, Baron Latymer.
Summary
Introducing his friend Mr. [Thomas] Arnold, who is a Fellow of Oriel (College, Oxford]; explaining that Arnold and a friend will be touring the Lake district and would be appreciative of suggestions from Southey of "...the objects most worth seeing & the best modes of taking them;" discussing his impending marriage and asking for advice on his career; saying "As you are an advocate, I know, for the holy estate of marriage, you will not be sorry to hear, I trust, that I shall have probably added a wife to my establishment before you get this. My means for meeting the expences of housekeeping in London are not very large; but my desires are not immoderate. I feel however that increased exertions will be necessary, and I have laid out my pan for a distribution of my time, and the substitution in great measure of writing for the more useful and agreeable occupation of reading. Will you allow me to ask for the benefit of your experience in this. - I must be careful, you see, to let nothing encroach on my profession, but at present the day & part of the evening afford quite time enough both for my professional reading and the business in it which I have to do. I have therefore a full right to devote an hour or two before breakfast every day as I please and I should be very much obliged to you to suggest to me the direction in which I can employ that time most profitably. I should prefer translations because it is a task to which one might bring the mind more surely and methodically, and because if the originals were worth any thing, it would imply the acquisition at the same time of some knowledge. My range of languages however would be limited but so indeed would my range of subjects for original composition. However I shall be indebted to you for any hints - and I trust to your goodness for excusing the liberty I take in asking you for them. I shall be married early in August, and go down with my wife to Ottery where I shall remain till the latter end of September;" expressing his hope of seeing him when he comes to visit his friends and promises that he and John May will serve him a leg of mutton and "...my most generous port should flow on with such an occasion."
Catalog link
Department