Coleridge | The Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1949, Ted Hughes' annotated copy

Property of Frieda Hughes

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. London: Oxford University Press, 1949

8vo (184 x 127mm.), front free endpaper with ownership inscription of Olwyn Hughes and transcription of lyric by Coleridge in Ted Hughes' hand, a few brief marginal annotations in Olwyn Hughes' and Ted Hughes' hands, sheet of lined paper loosely inserted with lists of titles of poems by Coleridge in Ted Hughes' hand on recto and verso, some spotting, hinges splitting, extremities slightly rubbed

A copy of Coleridge's poems passed between Olwyn and Ted Hughes over almost half a century.

The ownership inscription on the front free endpaper and marginal annotations in fountain pen to "Epitaph on an Infant" (p. 68), "The Outcast" (p. 71), "Fears in Solitude" (pp. 256-263), and "The Nightingale" (p. 265) indicate that this book was most likely owned by Olwyn during her days as a student of English Literature at Queen Mary College, University of London (from which she graduated with a 2:2 in the summer of 1950).

Whilst Olwyn read this copy as a young woman, Ted probably referred to and annotated it some 45 years later, in the final decade of his poetic career. Indeed, the list of poems on the recto of the loosely inserted sheet exactly correspond with the verse chosen for his 1995 Faber compilation A Choice of Coleridge's Verse, with the exception of "Recantation (Mad Ox)", which Hughes excludes from a revised list (in blue ballpoint pen) on the verso.

In one instance, Olwyn's annotation appears to have guided her brother's later critique in the Choice of Coleridge's Verse. In the preface to the Poems, she has underlined the quotation of Walter Scott's censure of Coleridge ("the caprice and indolence with which he has thrown from him, as if in mere wantonness, those unfinished scraps of poetry, which like the torso of antiquity defy the skill of his poetic brethren to complete them" (p. vii)).

It is Scott's phrase that Ted evokes and challenges in the first page of his 'Introductory Note' to the Choice, when he defends the poet against the charge of "indulging himself in a Germanic and wilful caprice, of which he was accused", instead placing Coleridge within an historical metanarrative of "orthodox and unorthodox [...] metrical forms" written in response to the "contingency of England's political and social history" (pp. 3-4)

LITERATURE:

cf. Ted Hughes, A Choice of Coleridge's Verse. London: Faber, 1996