By Catherine Angerson, Curator, Modern Archives and Manuscripts. A small show to mark the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) could be seen within the Treasures Gallery till 25 September 2022.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner recounts the experiences of a mariner whose ship turns into trapped in ice throughout a protracted voyage. The mariner brings nice misfortune on the ship and its crew by killing the albatross which helped to carry them to security. Coleridge’s melancholy and personal experiences of journey led to his rising identification with the Mariner and he continued to revise the poem, first revealed in Lyrical Ballads in 1798, at totally different episodes throughout his life.
A brand new short-term show within the Treasures Gallery brings collectively three of Coleridge’s manuscripts (a poem and two notebooks) and two Twentieth-century illustrated editions of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to mark the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the poet.
The Coleridge show within the British Library Treasures Gallery
The first merchandise on show is a handwritten poem titled ‘Dura Navis’ which Coleridge stated he composed on the age of 15 whereas he was a pupil at Christ’s Hospital in Sussex. The poem reveals the poet’s early preoccupation with the isolation of the traveller and the hazards of travelling by sea. The manuscript is an autograph truthful copy written down by Coleridge a few years after he first composed the poem. A 51-year-old Coleridge added a remark on the backside of the primary web page saying that the poem ‘does not contain a line that any clever school boy might not have written’ (Add MS 34225, f.1r).
S.T. Coleridge, ‘Dura Navis’, composed 1787; truthful copy round 1823. Add MS 34225, f. 1r.
At the centre of the small show are two of the 55 of Coleridge’s notebooks bought by the British Museum from the descendants of Coleridge’s brother James in 1951. Coleridge used pocket-sized notebooks to file ideas, emotions, quotations, journey accounts, language studying (particularly German), philosophical musings, poems and extra. Notebook No. 9 (Add MS 47506) comprises Coleridge’s impressions of a voyage to Malta in April 1804. In a quick second of calm within the Bay of Biscay, the poet observes ‘the beautiful Surface of the Sea in this gentle Breeze’ (f. 33v). A reference to his pal William Wordsworth’s poem The Female Vagrant could be seen close to the underside of the web page: ‘And on the gliding Vessel Heaven & Ocean smil’d!’ (f. 34r)
‘And on the gliding Vessel Heaven & Ocean smil’d!’: a reference to Wordsworth in Coleridge’s Notebook No. 9, Add MS 47506, f. 34r.
In October 1806, Coleridge drafted a brand new model of a brief part of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in his Notebook No. 11 (Add MS 47508). While the opening strains, ‘With never a whisper in the main / Off shot the spectre ship’, are near strains 198–199 of the poem revealed in Lyrical Ballads in 1798, the next two strains don’t seem within the first or the amended model revealed in 1817:
And stifled phrases & groans of ache
Mix’d on every trembling ^ murmering lip
Other pictures are altered however recognisable from half III of the poem revealed in Sibylline Leaves (1817). ‘The Sky was dull & dark the Night’ within the 1806 pocket book turns into ‘The stars were dim, and thick the night’ in 1817.
S.T. Coleridge, manuscript revision of strains from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in Notebook No. 11, 1806, Add MS 47508, f. 5r
Many artists have been drawn to the artistic power and supernatural imagery of The Ancient Mariner. The first illustrated version on show was designed, embellished and illustrated by Hungarian artist Willy Pogány (born Vilmos András Pogány, 1882–1955) and revealed in 1910. The illustration of the ship struck by a ‘storm-blast’ is reproduced from Pogány’s watercolour and corresponds to Coleridge’s phrases on the alternative web page. In the poem, the ship is pushed by a storm, ‘tyrannous and strong’, in direction of the South Pole. Pogány’s storm has a suggestion of wings just like the winged storm which chases the ship within the poem.
S.T. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: in seven elements; offered by Willy Pogány. London: G.G. Harrap & Co., 1910. Ok.T.C.40.b.13.
The show concludes with Mervyn Peake’s stark picture of a struggling and repentant Mariner in an version revealed by Chatto & Windus in 1943. In distinction to Pogány’s deluxe version printed on vellum, this version with seven black-and-white illustrations reproduced from Peake’s drawings was designed to be inexpensive. In Coleridge’s poem, the crew hangs the albatross across the Mariner’s neck to mark his guilt for killing the fowl of fine omen. Peake’s picture hints at the opportunity of redemption for the Mariner.
Illustration by Mervyn Peake, in S.T. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. London: Chatto & Windus, 1943. 11657.dd.18.
The Coleridge show on the British Library (till 25 September) overlaps by a number of weeks with the mortgage of the manuscript of Coleridge’s different well-known poem, Kubla Kahn, and a 1798 version of Lyrical Ballads to the Museum of Somerset for the exhibition In Xanadu: Coleridge and the West Country (till 25 June). The anniversary can also be being marked on the British Library on 20 October with the Wordsworth Trust annual lecture by famend Coleridge biographer Richard Holmes. Tickets shall be out there from mid-August.
Further studying
Kathleen Coburn, Merton Christensen and Anthony John Harding, eds, The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 5 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957–2002)
Seamus Perry, ed., Coleridge’s Notebooks: A Selection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)