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Letters, conversations and recollections of S.T. Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Thomas Allsop (ed.) (1795-1880)
London: E. Moxon, 1836

Rare Books & Special Collections
Rare Books Collection RB 92 C692l

We thank our donors...

Conservation treatment of Letters, conversations and recollections of S.T. Coleridge was generously funded by Adopt-a-book donor, Bryce Saint, and his family in memory of Nancy Saint. Their valued contribution has ensured this important piece of 19th century literature will be available for future generations of researchers for many years to come.

Synopsis

English poet and literary critic, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Devonshire, England, in 1772.  The son of a Vicar and master of the Ottery grammar school, Coleridge was the youngest of fourteen children.  He studied at his father’s school, where he immersed himself in reading, before moving on to Christ’s Hospital School in London to complete his secondary education.  In 1791 he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, where he continued to read, particularly in the field of philosophy.  Although remarkably intelligent and noted by his classmates as particularly eloquent, he was plagued by bouts of physical illness and depression and was never actually awarded a degree from the University.

In 1794 Coleridge met poet Robert Southey and together they planned to form a utopian Pantisocracy near the Pennsylvanian Susquehanna River. The pair married sisters Edith and Sarah Fricker the following year, a suggestion of Southey’s heeded by Coleridge despite the latter’s affections for another women.  In 1795, whilst still in its planning stages, Southey abandoned the Pantisocracy project to pursue a career in law, leaving Coleridge in an increasingly unhappy marriage.  He spent much of his time apart from his wife and they eventually separated.

In 1795 Coleridge befriended William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. He began writing again and often used his friends and their experiences as subjects for his works.  In 1796 Coleridge completed Poems on Various Subjects, his first volume of poetry.  The following year he commenced work on The Watchman, a liberal political publication and in 1798 collaborated with Wordsworth to write the joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads.  That collection contained one of Coleridge’s most noted poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Despite increasingly ill health and financial difficulties, Coleridge continued to write, producing poems such as This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison (1797), Frost at Midnight (1798), Christabel (1797-1800) and Dejection: An Ode (1802), the latter reflecting his emotional struggle with Sarah Hutchinson, a woman who was not his wife.

Letters, Conversation and Reflections of S.T. Coleridge (1836), edited by English author Thomas Allsop, is a posthumously published collection of Coleridge’s letters.  In it, Coleridge discusses his hopes and dreams for loved ones, his own struggles with mental and physical illness and the strength required to write and compose with so many other demands on his time.  Spread over two volumes, it offers readers valuable insight into the workings of a frequently anxious but equally beautiful, visionary mind.

Original Condition

Two water-damaged volumes with severely warped boards. Pastedowns (including bookplates), endpapers and portions of both textblocks significantly buckled.  Moisture damage to leather spines and to the marbled paper covering the boards. Both volumes difficult to open as a result of distortion.

Restoration by Anthony Zammit

Both textblocks, including the pastedowns, were exposed to moisture again.  This allowed the bookplates to be lifted from the pastedowns and flattened.  The bookplates were readhered to the pastedowns and the boards using starch paste and each book, in its complete form, was placed into a press where it remained for several weeks.  The distortion minimised under this pressure, the volumes can now be opened easily for reading.

Lee Hayes
January 2016