Beschreibung:

COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor. [ Sibylline Leaves . London: Rest Fenner 1817].
COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor. [ Sibylline Leaves . London: Rest Fenner 1817]. 8° (220 x 142 mm). (Without the subsequently printed signature A, E2 rubbed and slightly frayed at foot affecting several words of manuscript). Full brown levant morocco, covers with single fillet surrounding a border of gilt leaves, the corners with extending gilt roses, gilt stems and gilt dots, surrounding a pattern of six gilt bees and a central gilt panel lettered “THE HONEY FOR THEE THE FLOWER FOR ME,” turn-ins gilt and with gilt bees at the corners, leaves with extensive marginal notes by Coleridge left untrimmed, other trimmed, stamp signed at foot of front turn-in: “R. Riviere & Son for S.M. Samuels, 1897”; quarter morocco folding case. Provenance : SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (extensive annotations and marginalia by the author); Samuel M. Samuels (binding; his sale Sotheby’s London, 1 July 1907); Arthur H. Houghton (booklabel; his sale Christie’s London, 13 June 1979, lot 126). THE AUTHOR’S COPY OF HIS MOST IMPORTANT COLLECTION OF POEMS, CONTAINING THE AUTHOR’S REVISIONS, INCLUDING THE REVISED VERSION OF ‘RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER’ These sheets were printed by John Evans & Co. of Bristol in 1814-15 as the second part of an intended two-volume project consisting of Biographia Literaria and Sibylline Leaves . The register ‘Vol. II’ appears at intervals in the text. This project was abandoned and the sheets were acquired by Rest Fenner who printed the preliminaries and issued the work in 1817. The absence of preliminaries, coupled with the author’s caustic comments on the printer, suggest that this was the author’s proof. Coleridge annotates 24 pages throughout the text (see below), providing corrections, additions and sometimes entire stanzas, such as on pages 133, 176 and 282-283. The last of these, in “The Destiny of Nations” is accompanied by a marginal note adjacent to the printed stanza “Must be altered as false in philosophy & subversive in religion…” Following the printing of “Human Life” on page 269, Coleridge adds a witty verse about John Donne: Like Donne, whose Verse on dromedary trots, Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots, Rhyme’s sturdy Cripple-god, Wit’s Maze and Clue, Thought’s Forge and Furnace, Mangle-press and screw…” One of Coleridge’s lengthiest notes precedes the printing of the poem “The Picture”: “I do not recollect any number of lines under the name of a poem that more strikingly illustrates the nature and necessity of some one Spirit, a Unity beside and beyond mere connection, a life in and over all, as the Light at once hidden and revealed in the colours that are the component integers of the vision. In this poem there is no defect of connection. the thoughts pass into each other without a saltus , the imagery is sufficiently homogeneous; and the feelings harmonize with both, and plainly produce or modify both. But there is no under-current that moves forward from within, the one spirit is absent, ‘and it is this that makes the ship to go.’ S.T.C.” Coleridge reserves particular scorn for the printer, one of which suggests a date for some of the notes soon after publication by Fenner: “This leaf [pp.125-126] the Publisher’s had promised to cancel, together with 3 or 4 others made ludicrous by blunders of the press, and still worse by the presumptuous ignorance and coxcombry of the Bristol Printer, who perpetrates verses himself, forsooth! [p.126]. About a misprint in “Lewti,” namely “Slush” for Hush,” he writes: “... this ridiculous blunder was marked in the Errata - - & yet the Monthly Reviewer adduces it as one of the hundred newcoined barbarous and mock-imitative words or rather letters representing noises that disfigure my poems” [ibid.] To the thirteenth stanza of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Coleridge lashes out: “This… I had earnestly charged the printer to omit, but he was a coxcomb… the Devil damn him (i.e. his own Devil)” [p.15]. He then adds a note: “Between the Tropics there is n