First edition. Coleridge’s estimates of contemporary German poets and philosophers are justly celebrated, and the long autobiographical passages and critical analyses of Wordsworth and of Lyrical Ballads are of primary interest. ‘Though maddeningly unsystematic in structure, the book is a touchstone of Romantic criticism’ (OHEL).

Wise, Coleridge, 40; Tinker 696.

You may also be interested in...

WITH ARMS PRINTED IN GOLD [MULLIS, William].

A brief Account of the Blue Coat Hospital, and Public Library, in the College, Manchester, founded by Humphrey Chetham, Esq. in the Year 1651.

Sole edition, privately printed and very rare. William Mullis was the deputy librarian of Chetham’s Library, the oldest free public reference library in the English-speaking world. It was founded in 1653, along with the Blue Coat School (two years earlier), by bequests from the merchant and banker Humphrey Chetham. Both charities occupied the ‘venerable edifice’ built in 1461 to accommodate the priests of Manchester’s Collegiate Church.

Read more

[DEFOE, Daniel].

A Letter to the Dissenters.

First edition, the state with p. 48 numbered correctly. This tract is an admonition to Defoe’s fellow Dissenters, ‘saying that they enjoy great privileges at present, the Queen having undertaken to maintain the Toleration Act and even having for long resisted the Act against Occasional Conformity. The Dissenters have their own schools, which, strictly speaking, is against the law. Thus it would be madness on their part to join with the discontented Whigs – especially as they have recently been betrayed by the Whigs’ (Furbank and Owens).

Read more