Note 19:1 — GENEVIEVE[19:1]

First published in the Cambridge Intelligencer for Nov. 1, 1794: included in the editions of 1796, 1803, 1828, 1829, and 1834. Three MSS. are extant; (1) an autograph in a copy-book made for the family [MS. O]; (2) an autograph in a copy-book presented to Mrs. Estlin [MS. E]; and (3) a transcript included in a copy-book presented to Sara Coleridge in 1823 [MS. O (c)]. In an unpublished letter dated Dec. 18, 1807, Coleridge invokes the aid of Richard ['Conservation'] Sharp on behalf of a 'Mrs. Brewman, who was elected a nurse to one of the wards of Christ's Hospital at the time that I was a boy there'. He says elsewhere that he spent full half the time from seventeen to eighteen in the sick ward of Christ's Hospital. It is doubtless to this period, 1789-90, that Pain and Genevieve, which, according to a Christ's Hospital tradition, were inspired by his 'Nurse's Daughter', must be assigned.

'This little poem was written when the Author was a boy'—Note 1796, 1803.