Hello blog,

I managed to get two days in the British Library last week and spent some of those reading Joanna Baillie’s letters. There’s quite an extensive correspondence between her and Lady Jane Davy, Sir Humphry’s wife and I’ve come across a couple of really interesting things: in 1816 Joanna Baillie tells Jane Davy that she showed some of Humphry’s poetry to her brother Matthew Baillie, the surgeon, and ‘My brother, who does not read much poetry, has been delighted with Sir Humphrey’s [sic] verses’. In another letter, written to Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1822/3, Baillie writes that Sir Humphry has given her a poem for a collection she was putting together to raise money for a friend but the editor of Baillie’s letters notes that if Davy did in fact give Baillie a poem for the collection it must be an anonymous one. So I ordered this collection on Friday without much hope – and there’s a Davy poem in there! It’s called ‘Life’ but it’s a recognisable version of a poem that I’ve worked on before, which Coleridge suggests revisions for in a letter dated 1800. It was a poem he clearly continued to work on throughout his life, and it was published posthumously by his brother in his 1839-40 Memoirs under the title ‘Written after recovery from a dangerous illness’ (this version dated 1807). I wonder why his brother didn’t use the version Davy published in Baillie’s collection in 1823? I wonder what the impetus is behind Davy’s revisions of this poem? Why does he keep returning to it and what authority do the various versions have? In yet another version of the poem in one of Davy’s notebooks some of Coleridge’s suggested changes have clearly been made but these lines don’t make their way into the published versions.

Yesterday gave a paper at Bishop Grosseteste University College’s research seminar, and was able to use this poem as an example to illustrate points about ‘Science and Poetry in the Romantic Era’. In the coming months I’m going to have a think about the differences between them. It’s a real discovery because we didn’t think he had published anything beyond three poems in the Annual Anthology poems and the prologue to The Honeymoon. For those of you who know Wahida Amin, you’ll know that she’s writing a PhD on Humphry Davy’s poetry, the first study to look solely at his poetry, and this just shows that there is lots out there to find!

I was in London partly to have a planning meeting for event 3 (how quickly they are coming now!) with the Royal Institution and the National Maritime Museum. It’s going to be a great event and already we have some great sessions and speakers planned.

I hope that people will sign in to listen to me interview Peter Buse about his work on polaroid on Monday 8th March (see the blog post from LitSciMed for more details). It’ll be lovely to hear from you and have a virtual seminar before event 2.

Finally, I also heard on Friday that we have been successful in another grant application for the Davy letters project, this time £7,390 from the British Academy for travel to archives where we’ve found new material and to pay for a research assistant – which will really help with the work that we need to do! I’ll be writing the job spec soon and then we’ll be advertising the post.

All best,

Sharon