Export ban on Coleridge anti-slavery manuscript as British buyer sought

Handwritten poem in Greek from undergraduate years on sale for £20,400

A “fascinating” handwritten manuscript containing a poem railing against the slave trade by Samuel Taylor Coleridge has been temporarily barred from leaving the UK, in the hope a British buyer can be found.

The poem, written in Greek by Coleridge across six mottled pages, attacks the horrors of slavery and condemns those who overlooked the conditions of enslaved people on the Middle Passage transportation route in the late 18th century.