BIB_ID
415223
Accession number
MA 1848.30
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
London, England, 1799 December 24.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 22.7 x 18.4 cm
Notes
Coleridge gives only "Tuesday Night" for the date of writing. The letter has been postmarked December 25, 1799 and, during that week, Tuesday fell on the 24th. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
No place of writing is given, but based on the contents of the letter, it was clearly written in London.
This collection, MA 1848, is comprised of 92 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Robert Southey, written between 1794 and 1819. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 1848.1-92).
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 as MA 1848-1857.
Address panel with postmarks: "Mr Southey / Kingsdown Parade / Bristol / Single."
No place of writing is given, but based on the contents of the letter, it was clearly written in London.
This collection, MA 1848, is comprised of 92 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Robert Southey, written between 1794 and 1819. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 1848.1-92).
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 as MA 1848-1857.
Address panel with postmarks: "Mr Southey / Kingsdown Parade / Bristol / Single."
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
Making some remarks on London and Spinozism; advising Southey on the publication of "Thalaba" and assuring him that Thomas Norton Longman is "most & very eager to have the property of your works at almost any price"; telling him that the price Joseph Cottle received for selling the copyright to Southey's Joan of Arc and the first volume of his poems was £370: "You are a strong Swimmer & have borne up poor Joey with all his leaden weights about him, his own & other peoples!"; describing his life in London: "I am employed from I-rise to I-set -- i.e. from 9 in the morning to 12 at night -- a poor Scribbler"; discussing the financial arrangement he has with Daniel Stuart of the Morning Post; describing the type of writing he is doing for Stuart and listing contributions of various kinds: "any thing not bad in the Paper that is not your's is mine"; saying he "long[s] to be out of London"; adding that he has gotten a copy of The Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin (in which he is spoken of disparagingly) and has been advised to prosecute; saying that he will talk to Joseph Johnson about "Fears in Solitude" and if he can get the rights back, Southey can have it for the Annual Anthology: "That dull ode has been printed often enough"; vowing that as soon as he leaves London, he must get to work on the "Life of Lessing" (probably Gotthold Lessing): "till that is done, till I have given the Ws [the Wordsworths] some proof that I am endeavoring to do well for my fellow-creatures, I cannot stir"; writing that, afterwards, he sees no reason why they couldn't form a "pleasant little Colony for a few years in Italy or the South of France"; saying that he ought to give notice at the Morning Post immediately and "[y]ou should do nothing that does not absolutely please you. Be idle -- be very idle! The habits of your mind are such that you will necessarily do much -- but be as idle as you can"; sending news of friends and love to family members; writing "To morrow, Sara & I dine at Mister Gobwin's as Hartley calls him -- who gave the philosopher such a Rap on the shins with a ninepin that Gobwin in huge pain lectured Sara on his boisterousness"; admitting that Hartley is "somewhat too rough & noisy / but the cadaverous Silence of Godwin's Children is to me quite catacomb-ish: & thinking of Mary Wolstencroft I was oppressed by it the day Davy & I dined there."
Catalog link
Department