Administrative information
Custodial history
This finding aid is for manuscript materials held by the Pforzheimer Collection that were created by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. These materials have been acquired throughout the history of the Collection, and are kept on-site at the New York Public Library, filed in acid-free paper envelopes.
The first acquisitions of Coleridge manuscript material were from the sales of the effects of major collectors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The holograph poem "Love's Apparition and Evanishment," one of the last Coleridge wrote before his death in 1834, was the initial Coleridge item acquired by Carl H. Pforhzeimer in 1918. In 1919, Pforzheimer acquired the papers of Mary Evans, Coleridge's first love interest, at the Sotheby's sale of the English collector Alfred Morrison's autograph letters and historical documents. These papers, relating to the women of the Evans family and containing some of Coleridge's earliest poetry, remain the most significant grouping of Coleridge related materials in the Collection. See Griggs 76 for more information about the Coleridge letters destroyed by Mary Evans after her marraige.
1920 saw more poems and letters purchased from the sale of the estate of New York book dealer George D. Smith. Though, for nearly the next half-century, very few Coleridge materials were added to the Collection. 1969 saw the purchase of eight more items previously associated with Mary Morgan, the sister of Coleridge's friend John Morgan, via Sotheby's. These papers included four previously unpublished poems. Most of the Coleridge items acquired since then were purchased individually, from various dealers.
Because the Pforzheimer Collection collects actively, its holdings in Samuel Taylor Coleridge manuscript material may grow in the future as items become available for purchase.
Processing information
Finding aid first created by Charles Carter, 2013. Finding aid revised and expanded by Timothy Gress, 2022.
Note
Most items described within Series I, Writings, have been published with extensive scholarly commentary by J. C. C. Mays in the 3 books which comprise volume 16 of The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Princeton University Press, 2001) and are listed with reference. This publication is sometimes referred to as the Bollingen edition. Most items described within Series II, Correspondence, have been published in Leslie Griggs's scholarly edition of Coleridge's letters (Clarendon Press, 1956-71) and are also listed with reference. Additionally, poems which appear in Ernest Hartley Coleridge's 2 volume The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Clarendon Press, 1912) are listed with reference.