262. Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle, [c. 16 October 1797]*
My dear friend
Be good enough to get me poor Mary Wollstonecrafts Book upon Norway & Sweden.1 I want it for the lines to your brother which I am about to begin this morning. it will give me Scandinavian scenery — & an opportunity to speak of her as well as of her book.2
I have a heavy complaint to make of Amos & Robert for neither eating drinking or sleeping her[MS torn]
I think of walking over some day next week & returning the same evening. in this case Lloyd will accompany me. remember me to your sisters. I shall be in Bristol by their breakfast hour, & with their leave will make it mine.
God bless you. yrs R Southey.
the first six books are ready for Biggs. I have written about 1000 lines in different parts of the poem.
Notes
Address: To/ Mr Cottle/ High Street/ Bristol
Stamped:
BATH
Endorsements: R. Southey/ 1797; (99)
MS: Berg Collection, New York Public Library. ALS; 1p.
Unpublished.
Dating note: The
letter is dated from internal evidence. Southey was writing his poem ‘To A. S. Cottle’
by 16 October 1797. Back
1. Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796). Wollstonecraft had died on 10 September 1797. Back
2. Southey’s ‘To A. S. Cottle’ appeared in Icelandic Poetry, or the Edda of Saemund Translated into English Verse (Bristol, 1797), pp. [xxxi]–xlii. It included lines in praise of Wollstonecraft, p. xxxvi. Back