BIB_ID
415224
Accession number
MA 1848.31
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
London, England, 1799 December 28.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (2 pages) ; 25.2 x 20.5 cm
Notes
Coleridge gives only "Saturday" for the day of writing. In the Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Griggs notes that this letter was written in response to a letter by Southey dated December 27, 1799 and was answered by Southey on January 1, 1800. December 28, 1799 fell on a Saturday. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
Coleridge lists the place of writing as "No. 21 Buckingham Street," his London address during this period.
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.
Coleridge lists the place of writing as "No. 21 Buckingham Street," his London address during this period.
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.
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
Telling Southey to send him what he has completed of "Thalaba" and he will raise the idea of publishing it with Longman: "But we cannot expect that he will treat finally without seeing a considerable specimen. Send it by the Coach; and be assured that it will be as safe as in your Escritoire -- & I will remit it the very day Longman or any Bookseller has treated for it satisfactorily. Less than 200£ I would not take"; suggesting treatments for Southey's illness and commenting on different countries that Southey could settle in to recover his health, including Greece, Turkey, Poland and Hungary; concluding "O for Peace & the South of France!"; calling the new French constitution a "detestable villainy" and saying that he has written about it for the Morning Post; calling the French "Children" and writing "I wish they had a King again, if it were only that Sieyes & Bonaparte might be hung. Guillotining is too a republican a death for such Reptiles!"; suggesting an untaxing writing project for Southey ("a History of Levellers and the Levelling Principle under some goodly Title, neither praising or abusing them") and describing exactly how he should do it and how much he could earn from it; adding that he recommends this idea in particular because "it might be doing great good -- in[asmuch] as Boys & Youths would read it with far different Impressions from their Fathers & Godfathers -- & yet the latter find nothing alarming in the nature of the Work, it being purely Historical"; offering him his "ode to the Dutchess, & my Xtmas Carol" for the Annual Anthology and copying into the letter the first five verses of the latter.
Catalog link
Department