Samuel Taylor Coleridge manuscript verses on the slave trade

Description

Manuscript of ‘Sors misera servorum in insulis Indiae occidentalis’ (Ode on The West-Indian Slave Trade) submitted by Coleridge for the Browne Medal for classical composition in his first year at Cambridge.


The manuscript is written in a single hand in brown ink over 6 leaves, written on the recto of each leaf only.


The poem, a Greek Sapphic ode in 24 quatrains, discusses the evils of slavery and laments the fate of enslaved people on the Middle Passage transportation route. The text is entirely in Greek, apart from the heading. There are short notes by Coleridge in Latin and English on ff 3 and 4, and further pencil notes on ff 4, perhaps by his brother George, to whom the manuscript was originally sent.

Provenance

The manuscript was sent to the poet’s brother, the Rev. George Coleridge, in 1792. It passed by descent (probably through his nephew the Rev. William Hart Coleridge) to Betty Christabel Gertrude, Lady Cave (née Coleridge) (1895-1979); her son Sir Charles Edward Coleridge Cave (1927-1997), who is acknowledged by Anthea Morrison as being the owner in 1983. The manuscript was sold twice at Sotheby’s, London in 24 July 1995, lot 64, and later19 July 2022, lot 160.


The manuscript was acquired by Special Collections from Christopher Edward (bookseller) in June 2023.

Access and usage

Access

Access to this material is unrestricted.

Related material

Coleridge’s own transcript, signed ‘Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coll.Jes. Scholaris.’ and dated ‘In maximis Comitiis Jul. 3. 1792.’, is located in Cambridge University Library Archives, Charters 1.4, in Browne Medals: Odes and Epigrams volumes: Vol. II 1788–1808, 230–3.

The Cambridge University Library manuscript is published in full by Anthea Morrison, ‘Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Greek Prize Ode on the Slave Trade’, in J.R. Watson, ed., Infinite Complexity: essays in Romanticism (Edinburgh UP, 1983), pp. 145-160. MS 2282, then in the possession of Sir Charles Cave, was collated by Morrison, and variants were recorded in that edition of the poem.

See Coleridge, S. T. Samuel Taylor Coleridge : the complete poems (Penguin, 1997), 'Appendix 1: On the Wretched Lot of the Slaves in the Isles of Western India' for further information on publication of the poem.

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