'Our parents had accumulated a large number of books, which we were allowed to browse in as much as we liked.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book
'After tea...[on a Sunday, my father]...liked to read aloud to us from books that sounded quite well, but afforded some chance of frivolity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Vivian (Molly) Hughes Print: Book, Unknown
'The propaganda of Robert Owen alone did not convert printer Thomas Frost... to socialism: "The poetry of Coleridge and Shelley was stirring within me and making me 'a Chartist and something more'". Frost had been an omnivorous reader since childhood, when he read his grandmother's volumes of The Spectator and The Persian Letters. Most subversive of all were the letters of the second Lord Lyttelton: "The attraction which this book had for me consisted, I believe, in the tinge of scepticism to be found in several of the letters, and in the metaphysical questions argued, lightly and cleverly, in others. I was beginning to assert for myself freedom of thought, and to rebel against custom and convention; and there was naturally much in common between the writer and the reader",'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Frost Print: Book
"In June 1797, D[orothy] W[ordsworth] wrote to Mary Hutchinson, telling her that, as soon as [S. T.] C[oleridge] arrived at Racedown Lodge, 'he repeated to us two acts and a half of his tragedy Osorio.'"
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown
'I ... found Miss [Sara] Hutchinson reading Coleridge's Christabel to Johnny [Wordsworth] - She was tired, so I read the greater part of it: he was excessively interested especially with the first part ... '
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sara Hutchinson and Dorothy Wordsworth
'Mr. Wilson came to us on Saturday morning and stayed till Sunday afternoon - William [Wordsworth] read the White Doe; and Coleridge's Christabel to him, with both of which he was much delighted.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
Dorothy Wordsworth to Lady Beaumont, 28 February [1810], on departure of Sara Hutchinson after four years with Wordsworths: 'Coleridge most of all will miss her, as she has transcribed almost every Paper of the Friend for the press.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sara Hutchinson Manuscript: Unknown
Byron to John Murray, 12 October 1817: 'In Coleridge's life I perceive an attack upon the then Committee of D[rury] L[ane] Theatre - for acting Bertram ... this is not very grateful nor graceful of the worthy auto-biographer [whom Byron had championed] ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
'Lancashire weaver Elizabeth Blackburn... proceeded to an evening institute course in English literature and by the rhythm of the looms she memorised all of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind", Milton's Lycidas, and Gray's Elegy. She discovered the ancient Greeks at the home of a neighbour, a self-educated classicist with six children, and a Sunday school teacher introduced her to the plays of Bernard Shaw. While attending her looms she silently analysed the character of Jane Eyre's Mr Rochester, "sometimes to the detriment of my weaving".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Blackburn Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 31 August 1800: 'At 11 o'clock [pm] Coleridge came ... We sate and chatted till 1/2-past three, W[illiam]. in his dressing-gown. Coleridge read us a part of Christabel.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Manuscript: Sheet
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Sunday 5 October 1800: 'Coleridge read a 2nd time Christabel; we had increasing pleasure. A delicious morning.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Manuscript: Sheet
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Wednesday 22 October 1800: 'Wm. read after supper, Ruth etc.; Coleridge Christabel.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Manuscript: Sheet
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 4 May 1802, describing excursion to local river and waterfall: 'We [Dorothy and William Wordsworth, and S. T. Coleridge] ... rested upon a moss-covered rock, rising out of the bed of the river. There we lay ... and stayed there till about 4 o'clock. William and C[oleridge]. repeated and read verses.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Manuscript: Sheet
"The son of a shipwright, [Hall] Caine had been largely dependent upon public sources [in particuarly the Free Library, Liverpool] to satisfy his appetite for knowledge ... in this way he encountered Coleridge, a formative influence."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Hall Caine Print: Book
" But, if I chose to walk six or seven miles along the coast... I might spend as pocket-money the railway fare I thus saved. Such considerable sums I fostered in order to buy with them editions of the poets. These were not in those days, as they are now, at the beck and call of every purse, and the attainment of each little masterpiece was a separate triumph. In particular I shall never forget the excitement of teaching at last the exorbitant price the bookseller asked for the only, although imperfect, edition of the poems of S.T.Coleridge. At last I could meet his demand, and my friend and I went down to consummate the solemn purchase. Comimg away with our treasure, we read aloud from the oranged-coloured volume, in turns, as we strolled along, until at last we sat down on the bulging foot of an elm-tree in a secluded lane. Here we stayed, in a sort of poetical nirvana, reading, forgetting the passage of time, until the hour of our neglected mid-day meal was! a long while past, and we had to hurry home to bread and chees and a scolding."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
?Another book, by the way, worth a glance is a collection of old S. T. Coleridge?s letters. I have had to write the beggar?s life & have a rather morbid familiarity with his history wh. makes me appreciate better than some people his amazing wriggling & self-reproaches & astonishing pouring out of unctuous twaddlings. After all Carlyle?s portrait of him has done the thing unsurpassably well & it is impossible to add much to it. But there are some delicious bits in this.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen Print: Book
??Coleridge, who, en parenthesis, he disliked for a merciless attack on his tragedy. Which the ill success of the ?Remorse? had incited; and he had prepared a retaliation in the pages of ?Colburn?s Magazine? which I read in manuscript ? a review of ?Christabel?, but which I do not remember to have seen published.?
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Maturin Print: Book
'George Howell, bricklayer and trade unionist..."read promiscuously. How could it be otherwise? I had no real guide, was obliged to feel my way into light. Yet perhaps there was a guidance, although indefinite and without distinctive aim". Howell groped his way through literature "on the principle that one poet's works suggested another, or the criticisms on one led to comparisons with another. Thus: Milton - Shakespeare; Pope-Dryden; Byron-Shelley; Burns-Scott; Coleridge-Wordsworth and Southey, and later on Spenser-Chaucer, Bryant-Longfellow, and so on". By following these intertextual links, autodidacts could reconstruct the literary canon on their own'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book
Charles Lamb's response to reading marginal comments by S. T. Coleridge in his copy of Samuel Daniel's Poetical Works, in letter to Coleridge: "'I wish every book I have were so noted. They have thoroughly converted me to relish Daniel, or to say I relish him ... Your notes are excellent. Perhaps you've forgot them.'"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Manuscript: annotations in printed text
[Shelley encouraged her to read] 'some key Romantic texts (Coleridge, Scott, Southey, Volney's "Les ruines"), radical politics ("The Rights of Man" and "The Age of Reason") and radical sexual politics (Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" and James Lawrence's anti-marriage utopia, "The Empire of the Nairs").'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Westbrook
'Soon Pritchett was reading Penny Poets editions of "Paradise Regained", Wordsworth's "Prelude", Cowper, and Coleridge. He formulated plans to become Poet Laureate by age twenty-one'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Victor Sawdon Pritchett Print: Book
'1943 My Favourite:
Books: "How Green Was my Valley", "Witch in the Wood".
Authors: T.H.White, Hugh Walpole
Poems: "Christabel", "Lotus Eaters"
Writers: Shaw, Shakespeare'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
[Shelley] 'Reads the ancient mariner to us'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'[Y]ou interested me very much about Coleridge--I wish I had ever known him--his translation of Wallenstein is in my opinion perfectly beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'Shelley reads the Ancient Mariner aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Annabella was now reading Cowper's "Iliad" and annotating evey second line; she was studying Alfieri with the family-solicitor's daughter; for relaxation condescending to "Evelina". In "Evelina" she was disappointed, like a good many more of its readers - more perhaps than make the confession. There was study of Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge as well, for everyone was reading them... Annabella waded through "Madoc". She found some passages wearisome but was convinced that Southey would one day be ranked high "among the ancient poets".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
'Lookd in the poems of Coleridge, Lamb and Loyde - Colridges monody on Chatterton is beautiful but his sonnets are not happy ones they seem to be a labour after exelence which he did not reach [.] some of those by his friend Lloyd are exelent [...] "Craig Millar Castle" and "To November" are the best [...] Lambs best poetry is in "Elia"'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
'Our syllabus was large, covering at least twelve set books: two plays of Shakespeare's, two volumes of Milton and two of Keats; Chaucer, Sheridan, Lamb, Scott's "Old Mortality" and the first book of "The Golden Treasury", with its marvellous pickings of Coleridge, Shelly, Byron and, especially, Wordsworth, which excited me, at that age, more than any other poetry written.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Norman Nicholson Print: Book
'S reads Ode to France aloud and repeats the poem to tranquility'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley - again, only those not mentioned in journal entries are indicated separately in the database]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Metamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
x Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Read Curt. and Caroline of Litchfield. Hobhouse and Scroop Davis come to Diodati - Shelley spends the evening there & reads Germania - Several books arrive among others Coleridges Christabel which Shelley reads aloud to me before we go to bed'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Finish "Caroline of Litchfield" and "Marmotel's tales". Read Bertram and Christabel and several articles of the quarterly review'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'Read Lord Chesterfield - part of the Lay sermon'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'finish the lay sermon'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
''read Dante - finish Lambs specimens. walk to Mr Olliers. read Zapolya'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Shelley reads & finishes Coleridge's Liteerary [sic] life'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Thursday Sept. 15th. Read Emile -- Write i[n] my Common Place Book [...] Shelley reads us
the Ancient Mariner [...] Read in the Excursion -- the Story of Margaret very beautiful.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley
''Wednesday Oct. 5th. [...] Read Political Justice Shelley reads aloud the Ancient Mariner. &
Mad [...] Mother.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Wednesday August 16th. [...] Read Christabel & the Saggio Storico.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Read the Quarterly review & Remorse - an unhappy day - S. reads one act of the alchemist to the G[isborne]'s in the evening - read 2 Canto of the Purgatorio'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads the Antient Mariner aloud'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth, 17 May 1940:
'D'you know what I find? -- reading a whole poet is consoling: Coleridge I bought in an old type
copy tarnished cover, yellow and soft: and I began, and went on, and skipped the high peaks,
and gradually climbed to the top of his pinnacle, by a winding unknown way.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Sunday 5 December 1920: 'My brain is tired of reading Coleridge. Why do I read Coleridge? It is partly the result of Eliot [i.e. The Sacred Wood] whom I've not read; but L[eonard]. has & reviewed & praised into the bargain.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
In Diary of Virginia Woolf, facing page on which entry for 20 August 1932 and beginning of entry for 2 September written:
'Reading this August:
Souvenirs de Tocqueville
Any number of biographies --
Coleridge -- one or two poems.
Lord Kilbracken memoirs.
Shaw Pen portraits.
Ainslie memoirs.
Vita's novel
[...]
Nothing much good --
except de T:
Coleridges letters; but failed
to finish the 2nd vol.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
In Diary of Virginia Woolf, facing page on which entry for 20 August 1932 and beginning of entry for 2 September written:
'Reading this August:
Souvenirs de Tocqueville
Any number of biographies --
Coleridge -- one or two poems.
Lord Kilbracken memoirs.
Shaw Pen portraits.
Ainslie memoirs.
Vita's novel
[...]
Nothing much good --
except de T:
Coleridges letters; but failed
to finish the 2nd vol.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'I do not rank this Maga very high but would like much to know who this new village poet is this juvenile Crab Coleridge's letter is great stuff but correspondence of the Pringles continues to be excellent'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Serial / periodical
'I have brought Coleridge with me, & am [italics] doing [end italics] him & Wordsworth [-] [italics] fit place for the latter! [end italics]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
Wednesday 29 May 1940: 'Reading masses of Coleridge & Wordsworth letters of a night -- curiously untwisting & burrowing into that plaited nest [...] Reading Thomas A'Quinas [sic] [1933] by Chesterton. His skittish over ingenious mind makes one shy (like a horse). Not straightforward, but has a good engine in his head.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Friday 5 July 1940: 'Why should I be bothering myself with Coleridge I wonder -- Biog. Lit. & then with father's essay on Coleridge, this fine evening, when the flies are printing their little cold feet on my hands? It was in order to give up thinking about economy'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'... some verses which I wrote turn out, on inspection, to be not quite equal to "Kubla Khan".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'[whilst watching a boat race at Eton] Meta said she thought of the verse in the Ancient Mariner "A Seraph band" &c, - for each figure was motionless and bright, & the smooth current bore them past so noiselessly & still.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Emily (Meta) Gaskell Print: Book
'there is one Story if story it may be called, that Shape or Limb, Beginning or End has none, "The ancient Mariner or poets Reverie" written by a friend [of Wordsworth] (Mr Lambe?) & the Reason for my pointing it out to your notice if perchance you have not dwelt on its Singularities, is this that it does not describe Madness by its effects but by Imitation, as if a painter to give a picture of Lunacy should make his Canvas crazy, & fill it with wild unconnected Limbs & Distortions of features, & yet one or two of the Limbs are pretty'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Crabbe Print: Book
'last night [Barker] read me Coleridge's "Ode on Dejection" which is very beautiful in parts. It exactly expresses those bad negative states in which one looks and sees nothing - the "grief without a pang".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Barker Print: Book
'She comments, with discrimination, on Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Rousseau and Cervantes, "Tom Jones", "Emma", "A Man of Feeling", Coleridge, Mrs Shelley, and Crabbe'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 20-21 July 1794: 'When Coleridges work is published you will see a Latin Poem of Allens which did not gain the praise. the subject Ludi Scenici. of the execution you will judge for my own part I will not scruple to pronounce it very excellent. Coleridge means to translate it. he won the Greek Ode at Cambridge & I have promisd to translate it for his work, so you will have some memorial of us all.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Manuscript: Sheet
'Read some of Coleridge's "Friend", which gives one a higher notion of him than even his poetry'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Serial / periodical
'Annabella was now [in 1812] reading Cowper's Iliad and annotating every second line; she was studying Alfieri with the family-solicitor's daughter; for relaxation condescending to Evelina. In Evelina she was disappointed [...] There was study of Southey, Wordsworth and Coleridge as well, for everyone was reading them'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
'I have been reading a pamphlet by Mr Coleridge, which he calls ''The Statesman's Manual, a Lay Sermon.''... I do think I never did read such stuff as the sermon, such an affectation of the most sublime and important meaning and so much no-meaning in reality.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Wedgwood
'Your poems I shall procure forthwith. There were noble lines in what you inserted in one of your Numbers from Religious Musings, but I thought them elaborate. I am somewhat glad that you have given up that Paper - it must have been dry, unprofitable, and of "dissonant mood" to your disposition.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Print: Serial / periodical, Extracts from poems in periodical.
'By the time I was seventeen, my passion for reading had become so intense that a few hours [study in the public library] in the evenings seemed totally insufficient ... I started to spend odd shillings in second-hand bookshops and to keep my pockets stuffed with a volume or two for the purpose of reading when I should have been working. Chief among these first purchases were the volumes of the Everyman's Library ... A handy size for the pocket, they introduced me to Emerson's essays, Marcus Aurelius, Coleridge's Biographica Literaria, Carlyle, and to other writers.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vero Walter Garratt Print: Book
'Meeting held at 22, Cintra Avenue. 17th Sept. 1942
F. E. Pollard in the chair.
1. A card of greetings was read from Janet Rawlings, Beth and Victor
Alexander.
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
[...]
5. Howard Smith introduced the subject of Coleridge by telling us something of his
life and character. It was a sad story of real genius & ability frustrated &
unfulfilled by an entire lack of the powers of application and concentration, of a
brilliant conversationalist, a nature generous & affectionate, and a man extremely
fortunate in his friends.
F. E Pollard spoke briefly of Coleridge’s poetical importance & of some of the
sources of his ideas and images – sources not always acknowledge[d]. And
readings from his poetry were then given as follows:-
Parts of The Ancient Mariner read by AB. Dilks
Part I of Christabel [read by] J. K. Taylor
Kubla Khan [read by] Margaret Dilks
The Devils Thoughts [read by] Isabel Taylor
Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouny [read by] S. A. Reynolds
[signed at the meeting held 17 September 1942 by] L Dorothea Taylor'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Bruce Dilks
'Meeting held at 22, Cintra Avenue. 17th Sept. 1942
F. E. Pollard in the chair.
1. A card of greetings was read from Janet Rawlings, Beth and Victor
Alexander.
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
[...]
5. Howard Smith introduced the subject of Coleridge by telling us something of his
life and character. It was a sad story of real genius & ability frustrated &
unfulfilled by an entire lack of the powers of application and concentration, of a
brilliant conversationalist, a nature generous & affectionate, and a man extremely
fortunate in his friends.
F. E Pollard spoke briefly of Coleridge’s poetical importance & of some of the
sources of his ideas and images – sources not always acknowledge[d]. And
readings from his poetry were then given as follows:-
Parts of The Ancient Mariner read by AB. Dilks
Part I of Christabel [read by] J. K. Taylor
Kubla Khan [read by] Margaret Dilks
The Devils Thoughts [read by] Isabel Taylor
Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouny [read by] S. A. Reynolds
[signed at the meeting held 17 September 1942 by] L Dorothea Taylor'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Knox Taylor
'Meeting held at 22, Cintra Avenue. 17th Sept. 1942
F. E. Pollard in the chair.
1. A card of greetings was read from Janet Rawlings, Beth and Victor
Alexander.
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
[...]
5. Howard Smith introduced the subject of Coleridge by telling us something of his
life and character. It was a sad story of real genius & ability frustrated &
unfulfilled by an entire lack of the powers of application and concentration, of a
brilliant conversationalist, a nature generous & affectionate, and a man extremely
fortunate in his friends.
F. E Pollard spoke briefly of Coleridge’s poetical importance & of some of the
sources of his ideas and images – sources not always acknowledge[d]. And
readings from his poetry were then given as follows:-
Parts of The Ancient Mariner read by AB. Dilks
Part I of Christabel [read by] J. K. Taylor
Kubla Khan [read by] Margaret Dilks
The Devils Thoughts [read by] Isabel Taylor
Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouny [read by] S. A. Reynolds
[signed at the meeting held 17 September 1942 by] L Dorothea Taylor'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Dilks
'Meeting held at 22, Cintra Avenue. 17th Sept. 1942
F. E. Pollard in the chair.
1. A card of greetings was read from Janet Rawlings, Beth and Victor
Alexander.
2. The minutes of the last meeting were read & signed.
[...]
5. Howard Smith introduced the subject of Coleridge by telling us something of his
life and character. It was a sad story of real genius & ability frustrated &
unfulfilled by an entire lack of the powers of application and concentration, of a
brilliant conversationalist, a nature generous & affectionate, and a man extremely
fortunate in his friends.
F. E Pollard spoke briefly of Coleridge’s poetical importance & of some of the
sources of his ideas and images – sources not always acknowledge[d]. And
readings from his poetry were then given as follows:-
Parts of The Ancient Mariner read by AB. Dilks
Part I of Christabel [read by] J. K. Taylor
Kubla Khan [read by] Margaret Dilks
The Devils Thoughts [read by] Isabel Taylor
Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouny [read by] S. A. Reynolds
[signed at the meeting held 17 September 1942 by] L Dorothea Taylor'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sylvanus A. Reynolds
'I have just been reading 'The Letters, Conversations', &c., of this extraordinary man - and must
give thee this idea conveyed in a letter to one of his friends'
[quotes from Coleridge letter, 8 April 1820 here]
'What powers of mind Coleridge must have possessed, and how peculiarly his own was the
manner in which he applied them - his thoughts are unlike those of any other individual whose
correspondence I have seen...many of the letters require close thought, and even then I am
sometimes unable to make some of the very original ideas perfectly clear to myself.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Eliza Ellis Print: Book
‘[William] Blackwood expresses much admiration of the Fletcher Letters, but thinks their
republication at this time would not be just the thing - requests me to use my influence to
induce my Father [S. T. Coleridge] to compose a similar series, expressly adapted to the
present juncture - referring to the former, so as to get his foresight and insight in the clearest
point of view, and vindicate his claim to the character of a political prophet - And this I think
myself would be the more excellent way ...’
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Blackwood Print: Newspaper
‘...what makes you think that I dislike your ‘Table-Talk’?...I might tell Derwent [Coleridge], that
the book gave me no feeling of my father’s manner, which it does not pretend to do, but the
execution of the work I greatly admire, and Derwent well observes that it were sad indeed if so
much excellent criticism, so much moral, religious, and political wisdom were to perish with the
lips that uttered it.’
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hartley Coleridge Print: Book
'Mr father could not have written the Ancient Mariner at sixty, yet who will say that his genius
declined? The Genius was there as mighty as ever, but the frame could no longer endure to set it
a going'.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hartley Coleridge Print: Book
‘Owen Lloyd has lent me an essay on Faith by my Father transcribed by poor Charles Lloyd. It
will probably make a good addition to your forthcoming volumes. I will transcribe it tomorrow ...
I will also send you some marginal notes from the Andersons, though you will probably see the
propriety of not publishing the whole of one of them, as it contains opinions and certainly
expressions which my father would not latterly have approved.’
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hartley Coleridge Manuscript: Sheet
'...I should have thought that I acknowledged the “[Literary] Remains”, but I suppose I only
intended to do it. I am, on the whole, greatly pleased with them. There is little in the book
that is new to me. Some of the marginal notes can hardly be intelligible to any but those who
are familiar with the books in which they were written, and a few contain opinions not strictly
consonant with my father’s later judgement. But Henry [Nelson Coleridge] has performed a
laborious task, with infinite care, industry and skilfulness. ...’
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hartley Coleridge Print: Book
