The Isaac Newell Coleridge Collection -- Works of S.T. Coleridge
The 161 published works by and about Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his circle comprise the Isaac Newell Coleridge Collection. The books were donated to Memorial University by Jean Nast-Newell, widow of Isaac Newell. Among its nineteenth century editions of Coleridge's poetic and/or dramatic works are an early volume of his juvenilia entitled simply Poems 1803, as well as the very rare first collected edition of his poems Sibylline Leaves published in 1817. The collection also holds many collected editions of Coleridge's verse, including the second (1829) and third (1834) editions of the Poetical Works, issued by William Pickering. Other posthumous collected editions include the 1852 edition published by the poet's son Derwent and daughter Sara, containing previously unpublished material, and the revised editions of it, published in 1867 and 1870. The collection also holds R. H. Shepherd's four-volume Poetical and Dramatic Works of 1877.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge prose works are also well represented by early editions. Foremost among these is a set of early editions of The Friend, Coleridge's first major prose work, including the rare first edition (1809-10). The collection also contains two copies of the important 1818 edition, volume three of which is composed of almost entirely new material. There is also a posthumous edition edited by Henry Nelson Coleridge. Other early prose works to be found in the collection include several editions of Coleridge's Table-Talk (including the first edition of 1835); eight different editions of Aids to Reflection (including the first, 1825), a collection of writings on personal revelation in Christianity; the first edition each of The Statesman's Manual (1816) and A Lay Sermon Addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes on the Existing Distresses and Discontents (1817), Coleridge's two lay sermons on political justice and social responsibility; a number of early editions of On the Constitution of the Church and State (including the first, 1830) and three copies of the revision published by Henry and Sara Coleridge in 1839. The Newell Collection has no first edition of the Biographia Literaria but contains numerous later editions, including two copies of the second edition (1847) prepared for publication by Henry and Sara Coleridge from an annotated copy (now lost) of the first edition, which incorporated Coleridge's own notes and corrections.
In addition to works directly attributable to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Coleridge Collection also contains original works by other Coleridge family members, including Sara Fricker Coleridge's Minnow among Tritons; Mrs. S. T. Coleridge's letters to Thomas Poole 1799-1834, the poet's daughter Sara Coleridge's Phantasmion (1837) and Hartley Coleridge's Biographia Borealis (1833) and Essays and Marginalia (1851). Rounding out the Isaac Newell Coleridge Collection are works by other members of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's circle, including The Poetical Works of Robert Southey (1844), Southey and Coleridge's joint work Omniana; or Horae Otiosiores (1812), Joseph Cottle's Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey (1847) and James Gillman's The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1838).
Access to the Coleridge Collection
The collection may be searched online by using the Memorial University Libraries' Catalogue. To find items from this collection, enter your search term(s), and, when the results appear, limit by Library - Location > Queen Elizabeth II - Rare. To see physical copies of items in the collection, or to find out more about the collection, please contact Special Collections Librarian, Patrick Warner, at pwarner@mun.ca.
Dr. Martin Howley and Bert Riggs of Memorial University Libraries have prepared a brief profile of Isaac Newell and his Coleridge Collection.
For more information about the collection, please contact librarian Patrick Warner at the QEII's Archives and Special Collections.