Introduction

Supplement to Marginalia, Vol. 12 in the Bollingen Edition of The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published by Princeton University Press, 1969-2001

Coleridge's marginalia, edited by George Whalley and H. J. Jackson, appeared in six volumes in the Bollingen Edition between 1980 and 2001. Entries were organized alphabetically by author, each with a full apparatus of headnote, textual notes, and footnotes; the set as a whole was provided with a comprehensive Introduction and Index. Given the choice of alphabetical order, and considering the length of time that passed between the start and finish of the project, during which time salerooms continued to operate, there were naturally fresh discoveries made of annotated books that turned up too late to take their proper place. (A Burnet, for instance, was found at Sion College library not long after the publication of Volume One. The exasperated, perfectionist copy-editor, Bart Winer, only half jokingly told the excited scholar who reported the find that she should have rubbed out the notes and said no more about it.) But a home was found for these stray titles in the "Addenda" section of Volume Six. The editors' solution on that occasion provides the precedent for this online supplement, a place on the internet that is expected to provide a good home for new materials as they emerge.

In the years since the final volume appeared, various Coleridge items that can be classified as marginalia have been offered for sale through dealers or at auction. Most are what we know as "lost books", ones that were already on record and were included in the alphabetical series of the published Marginalia either by title only or in transcriptions based on copies made before the original book disappeared. A few fragments of marginalia have also turned up, generally loose leaves removed from the books they belonged to for the sake of autograph seekers.

The unusual event that prompted this new online supplement was the discovery of completely new marginalia, notes written by Coleridge in a book that his name had never previously been associated with, in the spectacular Crewe Bequest to Trinity College Cambridge--which also included a fine example of a "lost book" with some unrecorded notes. (See https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/library/the-crewe-collection/.) With the kind permission of the Wren Library at Trinity College, both those books (Dalrymple and Pereira) are included in the inaugural group of marginalia on this website, along with links to digital images of the books.

The first set of titles thus includes one completely new title (Dalrymple) together with three "lost books" (Colquhoun, Pereira, Taylor) and two fragments (Bull, Schelling). All are given in PDF format, in a style designed as a close approximation of the style of the Collected Works, with which all users should be familiar: headnote, textus and notes in different colours, textual notes, footnotes in two columns on the same page. Abbreviations and other editorial apparatus conform to the conventions of the Bollingen Edition.

The editor and the host of this online resource at Victoria University Library (Toronto) gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Trinity College, Cambridge, and thank Princeton University Press for permission to use materials copyrighted to them.

H. J. Jackson
Toronto, 9 January 2017