The British Library has launched a fund-raising campaign to secure the family archive of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834) for its collections. The Library has held Coleridge's notebooks and some family correspondence since a bequest from the Pilgrim Trust in 1951. It has now been offered the opportunity to purchase the remainder of the archive, which contains a wealth of material previously unavailable to scholars, including information about the poet's adolescence, his social milieu, his relationship with Wordsworth and the Lakes circle, his children and extended family. The several thousand documents, including diaries, correspondence, literary manuscripts and legal notebooks, date from between the mid-eighteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The British Library requires £710,000 to purchase the archive for the nation and save it from being sold overseas; to make a donation visit www.bl.uk/about/cooperation/supporters.html or contact the Appeals Manager Lucy Abbott at the Development Office, The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB.