Samuel Taylor Coleridge wanted to 'bid farewell' to writing at 22, letter reveals

He would go on to write The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, two of the greatest English poems, but in a letter written when he was 22, Samuel Taylor Coleridge revealed he was contemplating packing it all in and fading into obscurity.

- Steven Morris

The letter, which is being offered for sale by the London rare books and manuscripts dealer Bernard Quaritch, details Coleridge's low mood and disappointment in love, and appears to allude to an opium addiction.

The young Coleridge writes that he is finishing a work of "consequence," believed to be his long philosophical-political poem Religious Musings. But he adds that he is planning to "bid farewell forever" to the stress of writing. "I mean to retire into obscure inactivity, where my feelings may stagnate into peace," he writes.

Donovan Rees, the head of English books and manuscripts at Bernard Quaritch, described it as a "sliding doors moment" for Coleridge.

Rees said: "If his friends hadn't stepped in at the right time and taken him off to Bristol and to his future meeting with William Wordsworth, it is entirely possible his genius would never have revealed itself, and that his depression and laudanum addiction could have led to a very different fate.