BIB_ID
416560
Accession number
MA 2204.19
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Place not identified, 1803 April 5.
Credit line
Purchased from James Richard Scarlett, 8th Baron Abinger, 1962.
Description
1 item (2 pages, with address) ; 19.6 x 15.9 cm
Notes
Coleridge gives the date of writing only as "Tuesday Morning." Based on the date of Coleridge's insurance policy (April 7, 1803, a Thursday), Griggs argues that this letter was probably written on the Tuesday of that week, April 5th. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
This collection, MA 2204, is comprised of 41 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Godwin, written between 1800 and 1823. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 2204.1-41).
This collection, MA 2204, is comprised of 41 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Godwin, written between 1800 and 1823. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 2204.1-41).
Provenance
Purchased, via the London dealer Constance A. Kyrle Fletcher, from James Richard Scarlett, 8th Baron Abinger, in 1962 as a gift of the Fellows.
Summary
Informing Godwin that he is going to the Equitable Assurance Society that day with one of the managers, Mr. Ridout, to insure his life for a thousand pounds; saying that two references are needed and he intends to put Godwin as one of them: "it is simply a matter of form, to state that I have no distemper that tends to the shortening of Life - taken in the popular sense of the words;" sending kind wishes to Godwin's wife Mary Jane and "the least of your little ones" (probably a reference to William Godwin the younger, born on March 28, 1803); adding in a postscript that he hopes Mary Lamb is better and saying that "her indisposition will prevent Charles [Lamb] from calling to know how Mrs Godwin is -- for some days."
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