Mary Evans
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In 1792 Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote to Mary Evans, "Ten of the most talkative young ladies now in London-!!!" Mary was Coleridge's first love: "whom for five years I loved-almost to madness".[1] The "relationship" lasted only a short while, and in October 1795, she married Fryer Todd.
When Coleridge made plans with friend and future brother-in-law, Robert Southey, to emigrate to the "banks of the Susquahanna," Evans wrote Coleridge imploring him not to go. The letter reopened old feelings for Coleridge, inspiring the poem "Sonnet: To my Own Heart," which he published in his "three earlier and three later collections, as well as in Sonnets from Various Authors and has also received the title ON A DISCOVERY MADE TOO LATE.[2]. The poem was also included in letters to Robert Southey and Francis Wrangham in October, 1794, and he inserts several of the lines into a response letter to Evans in early November, after hearing of her engagement plans. Coleridge and Evans met again for the last time in 1808.
