‘Beloved Among His Books’
COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor.
The Poems … edited by Derwent and Sara Coleridge. A new Edition. London, Edward Moxon, 1854.
8vo, pp. 8 (ads), xxvii, [1], 388, with a half-title and a portrait frontispiece; rather shaken and loose, in the original blind-stamped green cloth, spine very worn and sunned, old tape repair at head and to front hinge; ownership inscription of William Michael Rossetti to front pastedown dated 1865, later inscription of Helen Rossetti Angeli dated 1920, with her note ‘Beloved among his books’; a few poems marked in pencil in the contents list, and one marginal note in pencil.
Second edition thus, first published 1852 – from the library of the poet, editor, and critic William Michael Rossetti. Though perhaps not as important to him as Shelley, Coleridge did exert a long shadow – William Michael Rossetti edited a critical edition of Coleridge’s Poems in 1880. For his brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Coleridge stood above the other Romantics: ‘I worship him on the right side of idolatry’.