Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, London, to Robert Southey, 1800 February 12 : autograph manuscript signed.

Saying that he must give up "this Newspaper Business" as it is "too, too fatiguing" and describing working for long stretches reporting from debates; saying that Longman is reluctant to publish "Thalaba" anonymously: "Translations & perhaps Satires, are, he says, the only works that Booksellers now venture on, without a name"; adding "He is very solicitous to have your Thalaba: & wonders (most wonderful!) that you do not write a Novel. That would be the Thing!"; saying "If we were together, we might easily toss up a novel"; musing on the possibility of a novel and how much they could get for it; saying that he hopes Southey writes a novel on "the Rise & Progress of a Laugher"; adding that Richard Phillips is interested in engaging Southey to write a schoolbook for him on "the History of Poetry in all nations," but this too must have Southey's name on it; quoting Longman as saying that "We Booksellers scarcely pretend to judge the Merits of the Book, but we know the saleableness of the name! & as they continue to buy most books on the calculation of a first Edition of 1000 Copies, they are seldom much mistaken: -- for the name gives them the excuse for sending it to all the Gemmen in Great Britain & the Colonies, from whom they have standing Orders for new books of reputation. This is the Secret, why Books published by Country Booksellers, or by Authors on their own account, so seldom succeed"; discussing where he, Sara and Hartley will live; saying that they must settle somewhere and it may be at Stowey, where all their books and furniture remain; adding that the Coleridge family wishes he would settle in Ottery St. Mary, "but that I must decline, in the names of public Liberty & individual Free-agency"; suggesting that they might come and spent part of the summer with Southey and his family in Burton; discussing where they might live all together and their plans for leaving the city: "Sara is shockingly uncomfortable -- but that will be soon over -- London does not suit either of us"; sending his love to Edith; including a long passage in Latin and Greek about his wife and how unsuited they are to each other; asking Southey to "[t]ell Davy I have not forgotten him"; adding in a postscript that he is going to spend the evening at Charlotte Smith's house.