Featured in our latest catalogue English Books and Manuscripts 1500 to 1840, a letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge speaks of a ‘sliding doors’ moment in the poet’s life, where in a moment of despair he contemplates abandoning writing altogether:

‘I must … after this bid farewell for ever to the stress, with which, I repent, that I ever formed an acquaintance – I mean to retire into obscure Inactivity, where my feelings may stagnate into Peace’

The extraordinary unpublished early letter, written shortly after Coleridge’s final departure from Cambridge, to his friend the ‘Jacobin’ poet and essayist George Dyer (1755–1841), talks of his depression at frustrated love, his first published work The Fall of Robespierre (1794), and his recent sonnets in the Morning Chronicle. Read more about the letter in the Guardian and in the Telegraph, below, or sign up to our mailing list to receive a copy of the catalogue.

The Guardian – Samuel Taylor Coleridge wanted to ‘bid farewell’ to writing at 22, letter reveals

The Telegraph – Coleridge cured broken heart with opium binge

For more works by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, see here, or contact our specialist Donovan Rees to enquire.