Samuel Taylor Coleridge | Autograph manuscript poem on the miseries of the slave trade, 1792

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Autograph manuscript poem headed "Sors misera servorum in insulis Indiae occidentalis" [Ode on The West-Indian Slave Trade]

a Greek Sapphic ode in 24 quatrains, lamenting the wretched fate of slaves on the Middle Passage, with one or two corrections or revisions and footnote glosses in Latin on "Hurricanes" and "Wilberforce", an added pencil note on the metre at one point, 6 pages, 4to, written on rectos only, signed and dated 16 June 1792, stab-stitched, patches of browning

"...I have been writing for all the prizes --- namely --- the Greek Ode, the Latin Ode, and the Epigrams. I have little or no expectation of success...The prize medals will be adjudged about the beginning of June. If you can think of a good thought for the beginning of a Latin Ode upon the miseries of the W. India Slaves, communicate --- My Greek Ode is, I think, my chef d'oeuvre in poetical composition..." (letter to his brother George, 2 April 1792)

AN AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT OF COLERIDGE'S FIRST POETIC SUCCESS. This fierce attack on the slave trade won Coleridge the Browne Medal for Classical composition in his first year at Cambridge. This copy was sent to his brother George and contains some variant readings compared to the submitted copy that remains in the Cambridge University Archives (the only other known manuscript of the poem).

The poem is printed, with collations, by Anthea Morrison in 'Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Greek Prize Ode on the Slave Trade', in Infinite Complexity, ed. J.R. Watson (1983), pp.145-160.

PROVENANCE:

Rev. George Coleridge, thence by descent; Sotheby's, London, 24 July 1995, lot 64