The archive begins with John Coleridge, vicar & schoolmaster of Ottery St Mary, and his ancestors back to the 17th century. It contains several thousand letters between members of the Coleridge family and other eminent Victorian correspondents, including Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone, Cardinal Manning, Cardinal Newman, John Keble, A. W. Pugin and John Stuart Mill. There is also a strong legal emphasis. The poet's nephew Sir John Taylor Coleridge (1790-1876), great nephew John Duke, 1st Lord Coleridge and great-great nephew Bernard, 2nd Lord Coleridge, were all distinguished judges and the archive contains c. 300 volumes of 'judges' notes' and the private diaries of Sir John Taylor Coleridge between 1808 and 1876.
Coleridge Family Archive
Item Provenance
By descent in the Coleridge family at The Chanter's House, Ottery St Mary, Devon