Samuel Taylor Coleridge manuscript verses on the slave trade

Manuscript of ‘Sors misera servorum in insulis Indiae occidentalis’ (Ode on The West-Indian Slave Trade) submitted by Coleridge for the Browne Medal for classical composition in his first year at Cambridge.

The manuscript is written in a single hand in brown ink over 6 leaves, written on the recto of each leaf only.

The poem, a Greek Sapphic ode in 24 quatrains, discusses the evils of slavery and laments the fate of slaves on the Middle Passage transportation route. The text is entirely in Greek, apart from the heading. There are short notes by Coleridge in Latin and English on ff 3 and 4, and further pencil notes on ff 4, perhaps by his brother George, to whom the manuscript was originally sent.

See Coleridge, S T. Samuel Taylor Coleridge : the complete poems. United Kingdom, Penguin Publishing Group, 1997, 'Appendix 1: On the Wretched Lot of the Slaves in the Isles of Western India' for information on publication of the poem.