Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, London, to William Godwin, 1811 March 11 : autograph manuscript signed.

BIB_ID
416976
Accession number
MA 2204.28
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
London, England, 1811 March 11.
Credit line
Purchased from James Richard Scarlett, 8th Baron Abinger, 1962.
Description
1 item (2 pages) ; 20.5 x 16.3 cm
Notes
Coleridge lists only "Monday, 1 o/clock" for the date of writing, but the letter has been endorsed "Mar. 15, 1811." In the Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Griggs gives the proposed date of writing as March 18, 1811, but this would have been the Monday after the 15th (which fell on a Friday in 1811). If the letter was written on Monday the 11th, it could then have been received and endorsed by Godwin on the 15th. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
No place of writing is given and there are no postmarks. Based on the contents and Coleridge's movements during this period, he most likely wrote this letter in London.
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
Saying that he is very glad he has recovered as it allows him to accept Godwin's invitation; writing "To sit at the same table with [Henry] GRATTAN - who would not think it a memorable Honor, a red letter day in the Almanach of his Life?"; praising Grattan highly and saying that "his great Talents are the Tools & vehicles of his Genius - and all his speeches are attested by that constant accompaniment of true Genius, a certain moral bearing, a moral dignity;" praising Grattan's love of liberty; asking Godwin to assure his wife of Coleridge's "anxious wishes respecting her Health" and including two lines in Latin; commenting on Mrs. Godwin's diet and the doctors attending her; saying that the night he left Godwin he was taken ill and that he was confined to bed until Thursday evening "when I put myself in the Hammersmith Stage, & by the care & the social feeling, and that approach to the domestic which alone is in my power, I am getting about again;" mentioning in a postscript that he has just received Godwin's note.