NOTEBOOK 26

BM Add MS 47,524

COVER

Brown leather, with clasp now broken. On the front cover is written in black ink “A 1826–1827”. There is inside the front cover the usual “S.T.C.” label. In the lower left corner is written in pencil “2/6”. Entries 5340, 5344, 5448, and 5452 are at various angles on the inside front cover foliated as [1^v] in ink. On the outside back cover, is written in ink “1826–1827” with “26” below the date.

WATERMARK

EMBLEM S

1805

SIZE AND CONDITION

158 leaves foliated by the BM [f1^v] to f159, 316 pages. One leaf was excised between f26^v and f27 before foliation, and one or more leaves appear to have been torn out at the front, also before foliation. Entries are in ink except where indicated in the notes. Ff13^v to 2, the notebook being reversed, are lettered A to W, Y.Coleridge’s numbering begins on f11 and continues to f128^v with the odd numbers appearing in the upper right-hand corners of the recto pages and the verso pages remaining unmarked, except for ff19^v, 20^v, 42^v, 62^v, 68^v, 72^v, 76^v, 86^v, 101^v, 112^v, 117^v, 123^v, and 128^v. The numbering system runs from 1 to 230. FIII (p 199) was not numbered. Coleridge began a second numbering from the back, from f157^v to f156^v, 1 to 3, again only odd numbers being used. A third numbering system going in the same direction begins on f152 and continues to f127^v, the pages being numbered 1 to 50. F 22, 22^v was tipped in, a calling card of “The Rev^d Richard Cattermole” on which entry 5390 was written.

PERIOD OF USE

The notebook was formerly a “Gillman Receipt Book” and prescriptions in a variety of unidentified hands appear on ff4−10^v and ff 153–156. Coleridge eventually, mainly in 1826, uszd ff1–3^v and 157–9, and wrote over the faint pencil jottings on ff4–10^v. He apparently began to use the notebook on the pages following the first series of prescriptions, as he began his numbering on f11 and his earliest entries, datable September 1823, are on ff11–17^v. The notebook was in use at intervals from then until October 1830, when the last entry was squeezed in on f152, the notebook being filled. The chief periods of use, however, seem to be May–June 1826 and May– July 1827.

The notebook was used from back to front as well as from front to back, sometimes without any apparent consistency. Entries were often squeezed in wherever there seemed room for them, often skipping about most confusingly among those already on the pages, the most notable example of which is 5374, which skipped over pages not yet filled but perhaps being reserved for some special purpose. The notebook appears to have been used as a kind of catch-all not only for personal miscellanies but also materials in connexion with entries in other notebooks, chiefly the Folio (in the 1826 entries) and Notebooks 33 and 34 in 1827, which record Coleridge’s studies in the NT in the summer of that year.