BIB_ID
415541
Accession number
MA 1848.62
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Grasmere, England, 1804 January 11.
Credit line
Purchased from Joanna Langlais, 1957.
Description
1 item (4 pages, with address) ; 23.8 x 19.2 cm
Notes
Coleridge gives only "Wednesday Night" for the date of writing, and there is no postmark on the letter. Based on Coleridge's movements at this time, Griggs suggests that it may have been written on January 11th, which fell on a Wednesday. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
No place of writing is listed. However, based on references in the letter, it must have been written while Coleridge was staying with the Wordsworths at Grasmere.
Signed with initials.
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: "Mr Southey."
No place of writing is listed. However, based on references in the letter, it must have been written while Coleridge was staying with the Wordsworths at Grasmere.
Signed with initials.
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: "Mr Southey."
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
Saying that he is upset that a copy of Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population has not yet reached Southey; strongly criticizing the Essay for its pessimism and sophistry, and arguing that Malthus's work is in fact in line with William Godwin's; urging Southey to criticize the book in a review and laying out possible wording; faulting Malthus for his verboseness; thanking Southey for an entertaining letter and saying that his letters are the only ones he opens "at once & with avidity"; commenting on his health and the effect of the weather on it; describing his illness and offering several ideas about what it might be ("no genuine gout, but primarily a Disease of the Skin, & affecting the Digestive organs by the diseased Action of the Skin"); saying that he is convinced a hot climate could help him; adding that if the weather is good tomorrow, he will depart for Kendal; sending love to everyone; saying that Derwent is not quite well and describing his stools; promising to write to Sara Coleridge from Kendal and to Southey from the next stage; writing in a postscript that he has learned that the copy of Malthus's Essay had not gone because of the snow; saying that he has unpacked it, removed a note of his ("which was a shade too deep in the gloomy Line") and sent it off again.
Catalog link
Department