Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Source

• Born: 21 October 1772
• Birthplace: Devonshire, England
• Died: 25 July 1834 (heart attack)
• Best Known As: The author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was famous for dreamy and somewhat creepy poems like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel and Kubla Khan (the last of which he allegedly wrote subconsciously during a fever dream). Coleridge and poet William Wordsworth were close pals and their collection of poetry titled Lyrical Ballads (1798) was an early pillar of what became known as the Romantic movement in poetry and art. Coleridge is probably best known for a poem from that collection, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which describes a sailor who curses himself and his ship by killing an albatross. Coleridge is also remembered for his turbulent personal life, especially his decades-long addiction to opium.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner includes the famous lines, "Water, water, every where / Nor any drop to drink"... Opium addiction was not a novelty among writers of the era. Others who indulged included Thomas de Quincey and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge, detail of an oil painting by Washington Allston, 1814; in the National … (credit: Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

(born Oct. 21, 1772, Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, Eng. — died July 25, 1834, Highgate, near London) English poet, critic, and philosopher. Coleridge studied at the University of Cambridge, where he became closely associated with Robert Southey. In his poetry he perfected a sensuous lyricism that was echoed by many later poets. Lyrical Ballads (1798; with William Wordsworth), containing the famous "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Frost at Midnight," heralded the beginning of English Romanticism. Other poems in the "fantastical" style of the "Mariner" include the unfinished "Christabel" and the celebrated "Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan." While in a bad marriage and addicted to opium, he produced "Dejection: An Ode" (1802), in which he laments the loss of his power to produce poetry. Later, partly restored by his revived Anglican faith, he wrote Biographia Literaria, 2 vol. (1817), the most significant work of general literary criticism of the Romantic period. Imaginative and complex, with a unique intellect, Coleridge led a restless life full of turmoil and unfulfilled possibilities.

For more information on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, visit Britannica.com.

The English author Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was a major poet of the romantic movement. He is also noted for his prose works on literature, religion, and the organization of society.

Born on Oct. 21, 1772, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the tenth and last child of the vicar of Ottery St. Mary near Exeter. In 1782, after his father's death, he was sent as a charity student to Christ's Hospital. His amazing memory and his eagerness to imbibe knowledge of any sort had turned him into a classical scholar of uncommon ability by the time he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1791. Like most young intellectuals of the day, he felt great enthusiasm for the French Revolution and took his modest share in student protest against the war with France (1793). Plagued by debts, Coleridge enlisted in the Light Dragoons in December 1793. Discharged in April 1794, he returned to Cambridge, which he left in December, however, without taking a degree.

The reason for this move, characteristic of Coleridge's erratic and impulsive character, was his budding friendship with Robert Southey. Both young men were eagerly interested in poetry, sharing the same dislike for the neoclassic tradition. They were both radicals in politics, and out of their feverish conversations grew the Pantisocratic scheme - the vision of an ideal communistic community to be founded in America. This juvenile utopia came to nothing, but on Oct. 4, 1795, Coleridge married Sara Fricker, the sister of Southey's wife-to-be. By that time, however, his friendship with Southey had already dissolved.

Poetic Career

In spite of his usually wretched health, the years from 1795 to 1802 were for Coleridge a period of fast poetic growth and intellectual maturation. In August 1795 he began his first major poem, "The Eolian Harp," which was published in his Poems on Various Subjects (1796). It announced his unique contribution to the growth of English romanticism: the blending of lyrical and descriptive effusion with philosophical rumination in truly symbolic poetry.

From March to May 1796 Coleridge edited the Watchman, a liberal periodical which failed after 10 issues. While this failure made him realize that he was "not fit for public life," his somewhat turgid "Ode to the Departing Year" shows that he had not abandoned his revolutionary fervor. Yet philosophy and religion were his overriding interests. His voracious reading was mainly directed to one end, which was already apparent in his Religious Musings (begun 1794, published 1796) - he aimed to redefine orthodox Christianity so as to rid it of the Newtonian dichotomy between spirit and matter, to account for the unity and wholeness of the universe, and to reassess the relation between God and the created world.

Perhaps the most influential event in Coleridge's career was his intimacy with William and Dorothy Wordsworth, in whose neighborhood he spent most of his life from 1796 to 1810. This friendship was partly responsible for his annus mirabilis (July 1797 to July 1798), which culminated in his joint publication with Wordsworth of the Lyrical Ballads in September 1798. As against 19 poems by Wordsworth, the volume contained only 4 by Coleridge, but one of these was "The Ancient Mariner." Coleridge later described the division of labor between the two poets - while Wordsworth was "to give the charm of novelty to things of every day by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us," it had been agreed that Coleridge's "endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic." But the underlying world view of the two poets was fundamentally similar. Like Wordsworth's "The Thorn," for example, Coleridge's "The Ancient Mariner" deals with the themes of sin and punishment and of redemption through suffering and a loving apprehension of nature.

A second, enlarged edition of Coleridge's Poems also appeared in 1798. It contained further lyrical and symbolic works, such as "This Lime-Tree Bower, My Prison" and "Fears in Solitude." At this time Coleridge also wrote "Kubla Khan," perhaps the most famous of his poems, and began the ambitious narrative piece "Christabel."

In September 1798 Coleridge and the Wordsworths left for Germany, where he stayed until July 1799. In the writings of post-Kantian German philosophers such as J. G. Fichte, F. W. J. von Schelling, and A. W. von Schlegel, Coleridge discovered a world view so congenial that it is almost impossible to disentangle what, in his later thought, is properly his and what may have been derived from German influences. Sibylline Leaves (1817) contains lively, humorous accounts of his German experiences.

Personal Difficulties

The dozen years following Coleridge's return to England were the most miserable in his life. In October 1799 he settled near the Wordsworths in the Lake District. The cold, wet climate worsened his many ailments, and turning to laudanum for relief, he soon became an addict. His marriage, which had never been a success, was now disintegrating, especially since Coleridge had fallen in love with Sara Hutchinson, sister of Wordsworth's wife-to-be. Ill health and emotional stress, combined with his intellectual absorption in abstract pursuits, hastened the decline of his poetic power. Awareness of this process inspired the last and most moving of his major poems, "Dejection: An Ode"(1802). After a stay in Malta (1804-1806) which did nothing to restore his health and spirits, he decided to separate from his wife. The only bright point in his life during this period was his friendship with the Wordsworths, but after his return to the Lake District this relationship was subject to increasing strain. Growing estrangement was followed by a breach in 1810, and Coleridge then settled in London.

Meanwhile, however, Coleridge's capacious mind did not stay unemployed; indeed, his major contributions to the development of English thought were still to come. From June 1809 to March 1810 he published the periodical the Friend. Coleridge's poetry and his brilliant conversation had earned him public recognition, and between 1808 and 1819 he gave several series of lectures, mainly on Shakespeare and other literary topics. His only dramatic work, Osorio, which was written in 1797, was performed in 1813 under the title Remorse. "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan" were published in 1816.

Later Works

In April 1816 Coleridge settled as a patient with Dr. Gillman at Highgate. There he spent most of the last 18 years of his life in comparative peace and in steady literary activity, bringing out several works which were to exert tremendous influence on the future course of English thought in many fields: Biographia literaria (1817), Lay Sermons (1817), Aids to Reflection (1825), and The Constitution of Church and State (1829). His apparently rambling style was well suited to a philosophy based on an intuition of wholeness and organic unity.

Although Coleridge's conservative idea of the state may appear both reactionary and utopian, his religious thought led to a revival of Christian philosophy in England. And his psychology of the imagination, conception of the symbol, and definition of organic form in art brought to the English-speaking world the new, romantic psychology and esthetics of literature which had first arisen in Germany at the turn of the century.

When Coleridge died on July 25, 1834, he left bulky manuscript notes, which scholars of the mid-20th century were to exhume and edit. The complete publication of this material will make it possible to realize the extraordinary range and depth of his philosophical preoccupations and to assess his true impact on succeeding generations of poets and thinkers.

Further Reading

The standard work on Coleridge is E. K. Chambers, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1938; rev. ed. 1950). Norman Fruman, Coleridge: The Damaged Archangel (1971), is a comprehensive study of the man and the poet. Two fine works that combine biography with literary criticism are William Walsh, Coleridge: The Work and the Relevance (1967), and Walter Jackson Bate, Coleridge (1968).

General critical introductions are Humphry House, Coleridge (1953); John B. Beer, Coleridge the Visionary (1959); Marshall Suther, The Dark Night of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1960); Max F. Schulz, The Poetic Voices of Coleridge (1963); Kathleen Coburn, ed., Coleridge: A Collection of Critical Essays (1967); and Patricia M. Adair, The Waking Dream (1968).

Increasing attention is given to the poet's thought in a great variety of fields. See John H. Muirhead, Coleridge as Philosopher (1930). On esthetics see I. A. Richards, Coleridge on Imagination (1935; 3d ed. 1962); James V. Baker, The Sacred River: Coleridge's Theory of the Imagination (1957); Richard Harter Fogle, The Idea of Coleridge's Criticism (1962); and J. A. Appleyard, Coleridge's Philosophy of Literature: The Development of a Concept of Poetry, 1791-1819 (1965). On religion see Charles Richard Sanders, Coleridge and the Broad Church Movement (1942); James D. Boulger, Coleridge as Religious Thinker (1961); and J. Robert Barth, Coleridge and Christian Doctrine (1969). For general background information the reader is referred to the bibliography in W. L. Renwick, English Literature, 1789-1815 (1963).

Additional Sources

Ashton, Rosemary, The life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: a critical biography, Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

Bate, Walter Jackson, Coleridge, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987, 1968.

Campbell, James Dykes, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: a narrative of the events of his life, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1977.

Chambers, E. K. (Edmund Kerchever), Samuel Taylor Coleridge: a biographical study, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978, 1938.

Doughty, Oswald, Perturbed spirit: the life and personality of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rutherford N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; East Brunswick, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1981.

Garnett, Richard, Coleridge, Philadelphia: R. West, 1977.

Gillman, James, The life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Philadelphia: R. West, 1977.

Holmes, Richard, Coleridge: early visions, London: Hodder &Stoughton, 1989.

(1772-1834) Born in Devon, educated intermittently at Jesus College Cambridge, which he left in 1794 without a degree. Coleridge was ‘myriad-minded’, to borrow his own phrase about Shakespeare, making significant contributions not just to poetry, but also to theology, philosophy, psychology, political theory, and criticism. His initial political sympathies were to radical dissent and anarcho-communism. And there was a strong, if not permanent, attachment to the ‘pantisocratic’ schemes of Robert Southey: small communities dedicated to the equal government of all. Events in revolutionary France and the extremes of Jacobinism gave Coleridge a more favourable view of both government and property, as well as a strong antipathy to natural rights doctrines, which he thought were harmful abstractions from national culture. His main philosophic enemy, however, was Godless materialism, a crude and dangerous habit of mind, which he associated with radicals such as Paine and Godwin, and utilitarians such as Bentham. And one of Coleridge's most enduring beliefs was that only the grand tradition of Christian Platonism was an adequate antidote to both materialism and rationalism. The ‘Lay Sermons’ in particular explore this very theme. The last published statement of his political philosophy, On the Constitution of the Church and State, 1830, avoided the prevailing platitudes of Anglicanism, while advancing the notion of a clerisy and arguing strongly for a positive end for government to develop all of man's powers.

— John Halliday

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834). Poet and polymath whose collaboration with Wordsworth laid the foundations for English Romanticism. Their Lyrical Ballads (1798) opened with his ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. Dogged by ill-health and self-doubt, his poetic career was brief and littered with unfulfilled projects: the incomplete ‘Christabel’; ‘Kubla Khan’ famously interrupted by ‘a person from Porlock’. Though no friend to Pitt's ministry, his ‘baby trumpet of sedition’ was already muted, and his last substantial work, On the Constitution of Church and State (1830), finds him staunchly defending them as ‘two poles of the same magnet’.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834) The English poet is important in the history of philosophy as one of the main conduits by which both the work of Kant and German Romanticism were introduced into England. Coleridge visited Germany in 1798 and began a period of intense study and assimilation of thinkers including Kant and Schelling. Like them, Coleridge propounded a view of individual spiritual salvation far removed from simple Enlightenment and utilitarian confidence in social engineering and material progress.

English author and mystic. Coleridge was born October 21, 1772, in Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire. He was the son of John Coleridge, a clergyman and schoolmaster who enjoyed considerable reputation as a theological scholar and was author of a Latin grammar. Samuel's childhood was spent mostly at the native village. During his youth he showed a marked aversion to games and even avoided the company of other children instead giving his time chiefly to varied reading.

"At six years of age," he writes in one of his letters to his friend, Thomas Poole, "I remember to have read Belisarius, Robinson Crusoe, and Philip Quarll, and then I found the Arabian Nights Entertainments." In this same letter he told how the boys around him despised him for his eccentricity, the result being that he soon became a confirmed dreamer, finding in his mind a haven of refuge from the scorn leveled at him.

By the time he was nine years old, Coleridge showed a predilection for mysticism. Consequently, his father decided to make him a clergyman, and in 1782 the boy left home to go to Christ's Hospital, London. There he found among his fellow pupils at least one who shared his literary tastes—Charles Lamb—and a warm friendship quickly sprang up between the two, while a little later Coleridge developed affection for a young girl called Mary Evans. The progress of the love affair was soon arrested, the poet leaving London in 1790 to go to Cambridge.

Beginning his university career as a sizar (undergraduate receiving an allowance from the college) at Jesus College, he soon became known as a brilliant conversationalist. He made enemies by his extreme views on politics and religion, however, and in 1793, finding himself in various difficulties, he went back to London where he enlisted in the fifteenth Dragoons. Bought out soon afterward by his relations, he returned to Cambridge, and in 1794 he published his drama The Fall of Robespierre. At Cambridge he met his lifelong friend Robert Southey, through whom he became acquainted with Sara Fricker, his future wife. Through her he made the necessary contacts to issue Poems (1796).

He began to preach occasionally in Unitarian chapels, and in 1797 he met William Wordsworth, with whom he speedily became a close friend. He joined Wordsworth in publishing Lyrical Ballads, which contains some of Coleridge's finest poems, notably "The Ryme of the Ancient Mariner." Scarcely before it was finished, he composed two other poems of comparable worth, "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan."

In 1798 he was appointed Unitarian minister at Shrewsbury; after holding this post for a little while, he went to travel in Germany, the requisite funds having been given him by Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood, both keen admirers of Coleridge's philosophical powers. They believed that study on the Continent would be of material service to him.

Among Coleridge's first acts on returning from Germany was to publish his translation of Schiller's "Wallenstein." At the same time he used a cottage at Keswick, intending to live there quietly for many years. But peace and quiet are benefits usually sought in vain by poets, and Coleridge was no exception. Early in life he had begun to take occasional doses of laudanum (opium), and now this practice developed into a habit that ruled his whole life.

In 1804, he sought relief by going to Malta, and afterward he visited Rome. On returning to England, he was happy to find that a small annuity had been left him by the Wedgwoods. He was quite incapable of shaking off the deadly drug habit, though it had not yet begun to weaken his gifts. After staying for awhile with Wordsworth at Grasmere, he delivered a series of lectures on poetry at Bristol and in London. His genius was quickly recognized in London, and he was made a pensioner of the Society of Literature, enabling him to take a small house at Highgate, where he spent most of his declining years. His remains were interred in Highgate Cemetery after his death in 1834.

Coleridge is representative of the romantic movement of the early nineteenth century, whose literary exponents wished to penetrate the mysteries of the inner self, and in pursuit of their goal often became mystics. That search was many times aided by the use of mind-altering drugs such as the laudanum to which Coleridge became addicted. Everything written by Coleridge is permeated with the romantic flavor. Apart from his metaphysical works, of which the most notable are Aids to Reflection and Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit, his Biographia Literaria and other fine contributions to critical literature are all of a mystical temper. Coleridge (more, perhaps, than any other critic, not even excepting Goethe and Walter Pater) was never content with handling the surface of things, but always reflected a striving to understand the mysterious point where artistic creation begins. For him, literature was a form of life—one of the most mysterious forms of life—and while he is supremely quick at noticing purely aesthetic merit and equally quick at marking defect, it is really the philosophical element in his criticism that gives it its transcendent value and interest.

Coleridge's metaphysical tendencies are equally marked in both his prose and his verse. In a singularly beautiful poem, "To the Evening Star," he tells that he gazes thereon, "Till I, myself, all spirit seem to grow." And in most of his poems, indeed, he is "all spirit," while often he spellbounds the reader into feeling something of his own spirituality. Waiving Cole-ridge's metaphysical poems altogether, it might be justly said that he introduced the occult into verse with a mastery rarely equaled in English literature.

The romantic had its dark side as well. Not only was the spiritual world explained, but often, in opening the unconscious, the world of nightmare and evil was also opened to the poets and novelists. Coleridge was no exception. Along with his mystical bent, Coleridge wrote the first vampire poem in the English language. "Christabel" tells the story of the invasion of a castle by the vampire figure Geraldine, who not only attacks the title character, but as the unfinished poem ends, has attached herself to her father.

Coleridge died on July 25, 1834 in Highgate, England.

Sources:

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Selected Poems. London: Oxford University Press, 1965.

Doughty, Oswald. Perturbed Spirit: The Life and Personality of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1981.

Nethercot, Arthur H. The Road to Trye: A Study of the History, Background, and Purposes of Coleridge's "Christabel." Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939. Reprint, New York: Russell & Russell, 1962.

Quotes:

"Advice is like snow; the softer it falls the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind."

"There are three classes into which all the women past seventy that ever I knew were to be divided: 1. That dear old soul; 2. That old woman; 3. That old witch."

"Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely."

"Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm."

"To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illuminate only the track it has passed."

"Friendship is a sheltering tree."

See more famous quotes by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a romantic poet and the first to introduce the vampire theme to British poetry , was born in Ottery St. Mary, the son of a minister in the Church of England. His father died when Coleridge was nine, and he was sent to Christ's Hospital, London, as a charity pupil. In 1790 he entered Jesus College, Cambridge. He left college briefly in 1793, but returned the following year. There he met fellow poet Robert Southey who would become his lifelong friend. Through Southey he met Sara Fricker, his future wife, and got his first contract to prepare a book of poetry.

In 1797 Coleridge met William Wordsworth, who was credited with bringing Coleridge's poetic genius to the fore. The initial result of this friendship was "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," published in the celebrated Lyrical Ballads, which Wordsworth put together. Coleridge wrote almost all of his famous poems during the next five years of his close association with Wordsworth.

Among the poems Coleridge worked on during this creative period was "Christabel". Though never mentioning vampires directly, it is now generally conceded that vampirism was the intended theme of "Christabel," the substantive case having been made by Arthur H. Nethercot in the 1930s. Nethercot argued that the essential vampiric nature of the Lady Geraldine, who was "rescued" after being left in the woods by her kidnapers, was demonstrated by examining her characteristics. First, throughout the poem, Christabel was portrayed as a potential victim who needed to be shielded from the forces of evil. Geraldine, however, was pictured as a richly clad woman first seen bathing in the moonlight (the element that revived vampires in nineteenth-century vampire tales). Second, as Geraldine approached the door of the castle of Christabel's father, she fainted. After Christabel assisted her across the threshold, she quickly revived. Vampires had to be formally invited into a home the first time they entered. Third, Geraldine then walked by the dog, who let out an uncharacteristically angry moan. It was commonly believed that vampires had negative effects upon animals

Coleridge dwelt upon the evening encounter of the two women. Christabel showed Geraldine to a place of rest. She opened a bottle of wine, which they shared. At Geraldine's suggestion, Christabel undressed, after which Geraldine partially disrobed, revealing her breast and half her side. What did Christabel see? In lines later deleted from the published version, Coleridge noted that Geraldine's appearance was "lean and old and foul of hue." Christabel entered a trance-like state:

Yet Geraldine nor speaks nor stirs; Ah! what a stricken look was hers! Deep from within she seems half-way To lift some weight with sick assay, And eyes the maid and seeks delay; Then suddenly, as one defied, Collects herself in scorn and pride, And lay down at the Maiden's side!

In a scene with obvious lesbian overtones, the two women lay together for an hour and again the animals were affected:

O Geraldine! one hour was thine! Thou'st had thy will! By tairn and rill, The night-birds all that hour were still. But now they are jubilant anew, From cliff and tower, tu-whoo! tu-whoo!

The next morning, Geraldine awoke refreshed and her lean, old, and foul body was rejuvenated, "That (so it seemed) her girded vests/Grew tight beneath her heaving breasts." Christabel, on the other hand, awoke with a sense of guilt and immediately went to prayer. She then led Geraldine to the audience with her father, the lord of the castle. Geraldine immediately attached herself to Lord Leoline while Christabel had a momentary flashback of Geraldine's body when she first disrobed. She attempted to have her father send Geraldine away, but he was already enraptured, and in the end turned from his daughter and departed with Geraldine at his side.

"Christabel" was composed in two parts, the first being written and published in 1798. A second part was finished around 1800. "Christabel" thus preceded Southey's "Thalaba," the first English-language poem to actually mention the vampire in its text.

After 1802, Coleridge wrote little and drew his income primarily from lecturing and writing critical articles. Most of his life he was addicted to drugs, having been hooked on opium in an attempt to deal with chronic pain and later consuming vast quantities of laudanum. He received some recognition of his literary work in 1824 when he was named a "Royal Associate" of the Royal Society of Literature. He died on July 25, 1834, at the age of 61.

Nethercot, Arthur H. The Road to Tryermaine: A Study of the History, Background, and Purposes of Coleridge's "Christabel." Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939. 230 pp. Reprint. New York: Russell & Russell, 1962. 230 pp.
Keesey, Pam, ed. Daughters of Darkness: Lesbian Vampir Stories. Pittsburgh/San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1993. 243 pp.

For the late 19th century classical composer, see Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Coleridge in 1795.
Born	21 October 1772(1772-10-21) Ottery St. Mary, Devon, England
Died	25 July 1834 (aged 61) Highgate, England
Occupation	Poet, critic, philosopher
Literary movement	Romanticism
Spouse(s)	Sarah Fricker
Children	Sara Coleridge, Berkeley Coleridge, Derwent Coleridge, Hartley Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English pronunciation: /ˈkoʊlrɪdʒ/) (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as for his major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. He coined many familiar words and phrases, including the celebrated suspension of disbelief. He was a major influence, via Emerson, on American transcendentalism.

Throughout his adult life, Coleridge suffered from crippling bouts of anxiety and depression (neuralgia); it has been speculated that Coleridge suffered from bipolar disorder, a mental disorder which was unknown during his life.^[1] Coleridge chose to treat these episodes with opium, becoming an addict in the process.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Pantisocracy and marriage 3 Later life, and increasing drug use 4 Poetry 4.1 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, and Kubla Khan 4.2 The Conversation poems 4.3 Summary 5 Literary criticism 5.1 Biographia Literaria 5.2 Coleridge and the influence of the Gothic 6 Notes 7 References 8 External links

Early life

Main article: Early life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in the rural town of Ottery St Mary, Devon, England.^[2] Samuel's father, the Reverend John Coleridge, was a well respected vicar of the parish and Head Master of Henry VIII's Free Grammar School at Ottery.^{[citation needed]} He had ten children by his first wife. Samuel was the youngest of three by Reverend Coleridge's second wife.

Of his childhood, Coleridge suggests that he "took no pleasure in boyish sports" but instead read "incessantly" and played by himself.^[3] After John Coleridge died in 1781, the then 8-year-old Samuel was sent to Christ's Hospital, a charity school founded in the 16th century in Greyfriars, London, where he remained throughout his childhood, studying and writing poetry. At that school Coleridge became friends with Charles Lamb, a schoolmate, and studied the works of Virgil and William Lisle Bowles.^[4] In one of a series of autobiographical letters written to Thomas Poole, Coleridge wrote:

“

At six years old I remember to have read Belisarius, Robinson Crusoe, and Philip Quarll - and then I found the Arabian Nights' Entertainments - one tale of which (the tale of a man who was compelled to seek for a pure virgin) made so deep an impression on me (I had read it in the evening while my mother was mending stockings) that I was haunted by spectres whenever I was in the dark - and I distinctly remember the anxious and fearful eagerness with which I used to watch the window in which the books lay - and whenever the sun lay upon them, I would seize it, carry it by the wall, and bask, and read.

”

^{[citation needed]}

However, Coleridge seems to have appreciated his teacher, as he wrote in recollections of his schooldays in Biographia Literaria:

“

I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time, a very severe master...At the same time that we were studying the Greek Tragic Poets, he made us read Shakspeare and Milton as lessons: and they were the lessons too, which required most time and trouble to bring up, so as to escape his censure. I learnt from him, that Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and, seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more, and more fugitive causes.... In our own English compositions (at least for the last three years of our school education) he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words... In fancy I can almost hear him now, exclaiming Harp? Harp? Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse? your Nurse's daughter, you mean! Pierian spring? Oh aye! the cloister-pump, I suppose! ... Be this as it may, there was one custom of our master's, which I cannot pass over in silence, because I think it ... worthy of imitation. He would often permit our theme exercises, ... to accumulate, till each lad had four or five to be looked over. Then placing the whole number abreast on his desk, he would ask the writer, why this or that sentence might not have found as appropriate a place under this or that other thesis: and if no satisfying answer could be returned, and two faults of the same kind were found in one exercise, the irrevocable verdict followed, the exercise was torn up, and another on the same subject to be produced, in addition to the tasks of the day.

”

Throughout life, Coleridge idealized his father as pious and innocent, while his relationship with his mother was more problematic.^{[citation needed]} His childhood was characterized by attention seeking, which has been linked to his dependent personality as an adult.^{[citation needed]} He was rarely allowed to return home during the school term, and this distance from his family at such a turbulent time proved emotionally damaging.^{[citation needed]} He later wrote of his loneliness at school in the poem Frost at Midnight: "With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt/Of my sweet birthplace."

From 1791 until 1794, Coleridge attended Jesus College, Cambridge.^[5] In 1792, he won the Browne Gold Medal for an ode that he wrote on the slave trade.^[6] In December 1793, he left the college and enlisted in the Royal Dragoons using the false name "Silas Tomkyn Comberbache",^[7] perhaps because of debt or because the girl that he loved, Mary Evans, had rejected him. Afterwards, he was rumored to have had a bout with severe depression.^{[citation needed]} His brothers arranged for his discharge a few months later under the reason of "insanity" and he was readmitted to Jesus College, though he would never receive a degree from Cambridge.

Pantisocracy and marriage

At the university, he was introduced to political and theological ideas then considered radical, including those of the poet Robert Southey. Coleridge joined Southey in a plan, soon abandoned, to found a utopian commune-like society, called Pantisocracy, in the wilderness of Pennsylvania.

In 1795, the two friends married sisters Sarah and Edith Fricker, but Coleridge's marriage proved unhappy. He grew to detest his wife, whom he only married because of social constraints. He eventually separated from her. Coleridge made plans to establish a journal, The Watchman, which would print every eight days in order to avoid a weekly newspaper tax.^[8] The first issue of the short-lived journal was published in March 1796; it ceased publication by May of that year.^[9]

The years 1797 and 1798, during which he lived in what is now known as Coleridge Cottage, in Nether Stowey, Somerset, were among the most fruitful of Coleridge's life. In 1795, Coleridge met poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. (Wordsworth, having visited him and being enchanted by the surroundings, rented Alfoxton Park, a little over three miles [5 km] away.) Besides the Rime of The Ancient Mariner, he composed the symbolic poem Kubla Khan, written—Coleridge himself claimed—as a result of an opium dream, in "a kind of a reverie"; and the first part of the narrative poem Christabel. The writing of Kubla Khan, written about the Asian emperor Kublai Khan, was said to have been interrupted by the arrival of a "Person from Porlock"—an event that has been embellished upon in such varied contexts as science fiction and Nabokov's Lolita. During this period, he also produced his much-praised "conversation" poems This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, Frost at Midnight, and The Nightingale.

In 1798, Coleridge and Wordsworth published a joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads, which proved to be the starting point for the English romantic movement. Though the productive Wordsworth contributed more poems, Coleridge's first version of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was the longest poem and drew more immediate attention than anything else in the volume.

In the spring of 1798, Coleridge temporarily took over for Rev. Joshua Toulmin at Taunton's Mary Street Unitarian Chapel^[10] while Rev. Toulmin grieved over the drowning death of his daughter Jane. Poetically commenting on Toulmin's strength, Coleridge wrote in a 1798 letter to John Prior Estlin,

I walked into Taunton (eleven miles) and back again, and performed the divine services for Dr. Toulmin. I suppose you must have heard that his daughter, (Jane, on 15 April 1798) in a melancholy derangement, suffered herself to be swallowed up by the tide on the sea-coast between Sidmouth and Bere (sic. Beer). These events cut cruelly into the hearts of old men: but the good Dr. Toulmin bears it like the true practical Christian, - there is indeed a tear in his eye, but that eye is lifted up to the Heavenly Father.^[11]

In the autumn of 1798, Coleridge and Wordsworth left for a stay in Germany; Coleridge soon went his own way and spent much of his time in university towns. During this period, he became interested in German philosophy, especially the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, and in the literary criticism of the 18th century dramatist Gotthold Lessing. Coleridge studied German and, after his return to England, translated the dramatic trilogy Wallenstein by the German Classical poet Friedrich Schiller into English.

In 1799, Coleridge and Wordsworth stayed at Thomas Hutchinson's farm on the Tees at Sockburn, near Darlington. There both of them fell in love, Coleridge with Sara Hutchinson ('Asra'), and Wordsworth with her sister Mary, whom he married in 1802.

It was at Sockburn that Coleridge wrote his ballad-poem Love, addressed to Sara. The knight mentioned is the mailed figure on the Conyers tomb in ruined Sockburn church. The figure has a wyvern at his feet, a reference to the Sockburn worm slain by Sir John Conyers (and a possible source for Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky). The worm was supposedly buried under the rock in the nearby pasture; this was the 'greystone' of Coleridge's first draft, later transformed into a 'mount'. The poem was a direct inspiration for John Keats' famous poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci.^[12]

Coleridge's early intellectual debts, besides German idealists like Kant and critics like Lessing, were first to William Godwin's Political Justice, especially during his Pantisocratic period, and to David Hartley's Observations on Man, which is the source of the psychology which is found in Frost at Midnight. Hartley argued that one becomes aware of sensory events as impressions, and that "ideas" are derived by noticing similarities and differences between impressions and then by naming them. Connections resulting from the coincidence of impressions create linkages, so that the occurrence of one impression triggers those links and calls up the memory of those ideas with which it is associated (See Dorothy Emmet, "Coleridge and Philosophy").

Coleridge was critical of the literary taste of his contemporaries, and a literary conservative insofar as he was afraid that the lack of taste in the ever growing masses of literate people would mean a continued desecration of literature itself.

In 1800, he returned to England and shortly thereafter settled with his family and friends at Keswick in the Lake District of Cumberland to be near Grasmere, where Wordsworth had moved. Soon, however, he was beset by marital problems, illnesses, increased opium dependency, tensions with Wordsworth, and a lack of confidence in his poetic powers, all of which fueled the composition of Dejection: An Ode and an intensification of his philosophical studies.

Later life, and increasing drug use

Coleridge at age 42, engraving by Samuel Cousins from a portrait by Washington Allston. Digitally restored.

Main article: Coleridge and opium

In 1804, he travelled to Sicily and Malta, working for a time as Acting Public Secretary of Malta under the Commissioner, Alexander Ball, a task he performed quite successfully. However, he gave this up and returned to England in 1806. Dorothy Wordsworth was shocked at his condition upon his return. From 1807 to 1808, Coleridge returned to Malta and then travelled in Sicily and Italy, in the hope that leaving Britain's damp climate would improve his health and thus enable him to reduce his consumption of opium. Thomas de Quincey alleges in his Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets that it was during this period that Coleridge became a full-blown opium addict, using the drug as a substitute for the lost vigour and creativity of his youth. It has been suggested, however, that this reflects de Quincey's own experiences more than Coleridge's.

His opium addiction (he was using as much as two quarts of laudanum a week) now began to take over his life: he separated from his wife Sarah in 1808, quarrelled with Wordsworth in 1810, lost part of his annuity in 1811, and put himself under the care of Dr. Daniel in 1814.

In 1809, Coleridge made his second attempt to become a newspaper publisher with the publication of the journal entitled The Friend. It was a weekly publication that, in Coleridge’s typically ambitious style, was written, edited, and published almost entirely single-handedly. Given that Coleridge tended to be highly disorganized and had no head for business, the publication was probably doomed from the start. Coleridge financed the journal by selling over five hundred subscriptions, over two dozen of which were sold to members of Parliament, but in late 1809, publication was crippled by a financial crisis and Coleridge was obliged to approach "Conversation Sharp"^[13], Tom Poole and one or two other wealthy friends for an emergency loan in order to continue. The Friend was an eclectic publication that drew upon every corner of Coleridge’s remarkably diverse knowledge of law, philosophy, morals, politics, history, and literary criticism. Although it was often turgid, rambling, and inaccessible to most readers, it ran for 25 issues and was republished in book form a number of times. Years after its initial publication, The Friend became a highly influential work and its effect was felt on writers and philosophers from J.S. Mill to Emerson.

Between 1810 and 1820, this "giant among dwarfs", as he was often considered by his contemporaries, gave a series of lectures in London and Bristol – those on Shakespeare renewed interest in the playwright as a model for contemporary writers. Much of Coleridge's reputation as a literary critic is founded on the lectures that he undertook in the winter of 1810-11 which were sponsored by the Philosophical Institution and given at Scot's Corporation Hall off Fetter Lane, Fleet Street. These lectures were heralded in the prospectus as "A Course of Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, in Illustration of the Principles of Poetry." Coleridge's ill-health, opium-addiction problems, and somewhat unstable personality meant that all his lectures were plagued with problems of delays and a general irregularity of quality from one lecture to the next. Furthermore, Coleridge's mind was extremely dynamic and his personality was spasmodic. As a result of these factors, Coleridge often failed to prepare anything but the loosest set of notes for his lectures and regularly entered into extremely long digressions which his audiences found difficult to follow. However, it was the lecture on Hamlet given on 2 January 1812 that was considered the best and has influenced Hamlet studies ever since. Before Coleridge, Hamlet was often denigrated and belittled by critics from Voltaire to Dr. Johnson. Coleridge rescued Hamlet and his thoughts on the play are often still published as supplements to the text.

In August 1814, Coleridge was approached by Lord Byron's publisher, John Murray, about the possibility of translating Goethe's classic Faust (1808). Coleridge was regarded by many as the greatest living writer on the demonic and he accepted the commission, only to abandon work on it after six weeks. Until recently, scholars have accepted that Coleridge never returned to the project, despite Goethe's own belief in the 1820s that Coleridge had in fact completed a long translation of the work. In September 2007, Oxford University Press sparked a heated scholarly controversy by publishing an English translation of Goethe's work which purported to be Coleridge's long-lost masterpiece (the text in question first appeared anonymously in 1821).^[14]

In 1817, Coleridge, with his addiction worsening, his spirits depressed, and his family alienated, took residence in the home of the physician James Gillman, first at South Grove and later at the nearby 3 The Grove, Highgate, London, England. He remained there for the rest of his life, and the house became a place of literary pilgrimage of writers including Carlyle and Emerson. In Gillman's home, he finished his major prose work, the Biographia Literaria (1815), a volume composed of 23 chapters of autobiographical notes and dissertations on various subjects, including some incisive literary theory and criticism. He composed much poetry here and had many inspirations — a few of them from opium overdose. Perhaps because he conceived such grand projects, he had difficulty carrying them through to completion, and he berated himself for his "indolence". It is unclear whether his growing use of opium (and the brandy in which it was dissolved) was a symptom or a cause of his growing depression.

He published other writings while he was living at the Gillman home, notably Sibylline Leaves (1820), Aids to Reflection (1825), and Church and State (1826). He died in Highgate, London on 25 July 1834 as a result of heart failure compounded by an unknown lung disorder, possibly linked to his use of opium. Coleridge had spent 18 years under the roof of the Gillman family, who built an addition onto their home to accommodate the poet.^[15]

Poetry

A statue of the Ancient Mariner at Watchet Harbour, Somerset, England, unveiled in September 2003 as a tribute to Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Ah ! well a-day ! what evil looks
Had I from old and young !
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, and Kubla Khan

Coleridge is probably best known for his long poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel. Even those who have never read the Rime have come under its influence: its words have given the English language the metaphor of an albatross around one's neck, the quotation of "water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink (almost always rendered as "but not a drop to drink")", and the phrase "a sadder and a wiser man (again, usually rendered as "sadder but wiser man")". Christabel is known for its musical rhythm, language, and its Gothic tale.

Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment, although shorter, is also widely known. Both Kubla Khan and Christabel have an additional "romantic" aura because they were never finished. Stopford Brooke characterised both poems as having no rival due to their "exquisite metrical movement" and "imaginative phrasing."

The Conversation poems

Main article: Conversation poems

The Eolian Harp (1795) Reflections on having left a Place of Retirement (1795) This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison (1797) Frost at Midnight (1798)

Fears in Solitude (1798) The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem (1798) Dejection: An Ode (1802) To William Wordsworth (1807)

The eight of Coleridge's poems listed above are now often discussed as a group entitled "Conversation poems". The term itself was coined in 1928 by George McLean Harper, who borrowed the subtitle of The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem (1798) to describe the seven other poems as well.^[16][17] The poems are considered by many critics to be among Coleridge's finest verses; thus Harold Bloom has written, "With Dejection, The Ancient Mariner, and Kubla Khan, Frost at Midnight shows Coleridge at his most impressive."^[18] They are also among his most influential poems, as discussed further below.

Harper himself considered that the eight poems represented a form of blank verse that is "...more fluent and easy than Milton's, or any that had been written since Milton".^[19] In 2006 Robert Koelzer wrote about another aspect of this apparent "easiness", noting that Conversation poems such as "... Coleridge's The Eolian Harp and The Nightingale maintain a middle register of speech, employing an idiomatic language that is capable of being construed as un-symbolic and un-musical: language that lets itself be taken as 'merely talk' rather than rapturous 'song'."^[20]

The last ten lines of Frost at Midnight were chosen by Harper as the "best example of the peculiar kind of blank verse Coleridge had evolved, as natural-seeming as prose, but as exquisitely artistic as the most complicated sonnet."^[21] The speaker of the poem is addressing his infant son, asleep by his side:

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

In 1965, M. H. Abrams wrote a broad description that applies to the Conversation poems: "The speaker begins with a description of the landscape; an aspect or change of aspect in the landscape evokes a varied by integral process of memory, thought, anticipation, and feeling which remains closely intervolved with the outer scene. In the course of this meditation the lyric speaker achieves an insight, faces up to a tragic loss, comes to a moral decision, or resolves an emotional problem. Often the poem rounds itself to end where it began, at the outer scene, but with an altered mood and deepened understanding which is the result of the intervening meditation."^[22] In fact, Abrams was describing both the Conversation poems and later poems influenced by them. Abrams' essay has been called a "touchstone of literary criticism".^[23] As Paul Magnuson described it in 2002, "Abrams credited Coleridge with originating what Abrams called the 'greater Romantic lyric', a genre that began with Coleridge's 'Conversation' poems, and included Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, Shelley's Stanzas Written in Dejection and Keats's Ode to a Nightingale, and was a major influence on more modern lyrics by Matthew Arnold, Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, and W. H. Auden."^[17]

Summary

Despite not enjoying the name recognition or popular acclaim that Wordsworth or Shelley have had, Coleridge is one of the most important figures in English poetry. His poems directly and deeply influenced all the major poets of the age. He was known by his contemporaries as a meticulous craftsman who was more rigorous in his careful reworking of his poems than any other poet, and Southey and Wordsworth were dependent on his professional advice. His influence on Wordsworth is particularly important because many critics have credited Coleridge with the very idea of "Conversational Poetry". The idea of utilizing common, everyday language to express profound poetic images and ideas for which Wordsworth became so famous may have originated almost entirely in Coleridge’s mind. It is difficult to imagine Wordsworth’s great poems, The Excursion or The Prelude, ever having been written without the direct influence of Coleridge’s originality.

And as important as Coleridge was to poetry as a poet, he was equally important to poetry as a critic. Coleridge's philosophy of poetry, which he developed over many years, has been deeply influential in the field of literary criticism. This influence can be seen in such critics as A.O. Lovejoy and I.A. Richards.

Literary criticism

Biographia Literaria

In addition to his poetry, Coleridge also wrote influential pieces of literary criticism including Biographia Literaria, a collection of his thoughts and opinions on literature which he published in 1817. The work delivered both biographical explanations of the author's life as well as his impressions on literature. The collection also contained an analysis of a broad range of philosophical principles of literature ranging from Aristotle to Immanuel Kant and Schelling and applied them to the poetry of peers such as William Wordsworth.^[24][25] Coleridge's explanation of metaphysical principles were popular topics of discourse in academic communities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and T.S. Eliot stated that he believed that Coleridge was "perhaps the greatest of English critics, and in a sense the last." Eliot suggests that Coleridge displayed "natural abilities" far greater than his contemporaries, dissecting literature and applying philosophical principles of metaphysics in a way that brought the subject of his criticisms away from the text and into a world of logical analysis that mixed logical analysis and emotion. However, Eliot also criticizes Coleridge for allowing his emotion to play a role in the metaphysical process, believing that critics should not have emotions that are not provoked by the work being studied.^[26] Hugh Kenner in Historical Fictions, discusses Norman Furman's Coleridge, the Damaged Archangel and suggests that the term "criticism" is too often applied to Biographia Literaria, which both he and Furman describe as having failed to explain or help the reader understand works of art. To Kenner, Coleridge's attempt to discuss complex philosophical concepts without describing the rational process behind them displays a lack of critical thinking that makes the volume more of a biography than a work of criticism.^[27]

Coleridge and the influence of the Gothic

Gothic novels like Polidori’s The Vampyre, Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian, and Matthew Lewis's The Monk were the best-sellers of the end of the eighteenth century, and thrilled many young women (who were often strictly forbidden to read them). Jane Austen satirized the style mercilessly in Northanger Abbey.

Coleridge wrote reviews of Radcliffe’s books and The Mad Monk, among others. He comments in his reviews:

“

Situations of torment, and images of naked horror, are easily conceived; and a writer in whose works they abound, deserves our gratitude almost equally with him who should drag us by way of sport through a military hospital, or force us to sit at the dissecting-table of a natural philosopher. To trace the nice boundaries, beyond which terror and sympathy are deserted by the pleasurable emotions, - to reach those limits, yet never to pass them, hic labor, hic opus est.

”

and:

“

The horrible and the preternatural have usually seized on the popular taste, at the rise and decline of literature. Most powerful stimulants, they can never be required except by the torpor of an unawakened, or the languor of an exhausted, appetite... We trust, however, that satiety will banish what good sense should have prevented; and that, wearied with fiends, incomprehensible characters, with shrieks, murders, and subterraneous dungeons, the public will learn, by the multitude of the manufacturers, with how little expense of thought or imagination this species of composition is manufactured.

”

However, Coleridge used these elements in poems such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), Christabel and Kubla Khan (published in 1816, but known in manuscript form before then) and certainly influenced other poets and writers of the time. Poems like this both drew inspiration from and helped to inflame the craze for Gothic romance. Mary Shelley, who knew Coleridge well, mentions The Rime of the Ancient Mariner twice directly in Frankenstein, and some of the descriptions in the novel echo it indirectly. Although William Godwin, her father, disagreed with Coleridge on some important issues, he respected his opinions and Coleridge often visited the Godwins. Mary Shelley later recalled hiding behind the sofa and hearing his voice chanting The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Notes

1. ^ Jamison, Kay Redfield. Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. Free Press (1994.), 219-224.
2. ^ Radley, 13
3. ^ Coleridge,Samuel Taylor, Joseph Noel Paton, Katharine Lee Bates.Coleridge's Ancient Mariner Ed Katharine Lee Bates. Shewell, & Sanborn (1889) p.2
4. ^ Morley, Henry. Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christobel, &c. New York: Routledge (1884) pp.i-iv
5. ^ Coleridge, Samuel Taylor in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
6. ^ Radley, 14
7. ^ Holmes, 4
8. ^ Bate, 24
9. ^ Radley, 16
10. ^ Welcome to Taunton's Historic Unitarian Congregation and Chapel (Dec. 2005). Unitarian Chapel, Mary Street, Taunton. Obtained Oct. 21, 2006.
11. ^ Calvert-Toulmin, Bruce. (2006) Toulmin Family Home Page. Joshua Toulmin (*1331) 1740 - 1815. Obtained Oct. 21, 2006.
12. ^ The Conyers falchion (a broad, short medieval sword) is traditionally presented to incoming Bishops of Durham, as they ride across the bridge at Croft.
13. ^ For an appraisal of Sharp's role in Coleridge's career, see Knapman, D. (2004) Conversation Sharp: the Biography of a London Gentleman, Richard Sharp (1759-1835), in Letters, Prose and Verse. [Private Publication]. (Held by British Library)
14. ^ The debate is being followed at a dedicated page on http://www.friendsofcoleridge.com/Faustus.htm Faustus (1821) controversy
15. ^ Gillman, Alexander William (1895) Searches into the History of the Gillman or Gilman Family. London: Published by Elliot Stock
16. ^ Harper (1928), pp. 3-27.
17. ^ ^{a b} Magnuson (2002), p. 45.
18. ^ Bloom (1971), p. 202.
19. ^ Harper (1928), p. 11.
20. ^ Koelzer (2006), p. 68.
21. ^ Harper (1928), p. 15.
22. ^ Abrams (1965), p.
23. ^ Koelzer (2006). p. 67.
24. ^ Beckson (1963), pp. 265-266.
25. ^ See article on Mimesis
26. ^ Eliot (1956), pp. 50-56.
27. ^ Kenner (1995), pp. 40-45.

References

• Abrams, M. H. (1965). "Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric". in Hilles, Frederick W.; Bloom, Harold. From Sensibility to Romanticism. Oxford University Press. pp. 527–8. 
• Bate, Walter Jackson (1968). Coleridge. The Macmillan Company. 
• Beckson, Karl E. (1963). Great Theories in Literary Criticism. Farrar, Straus. 
• Bloom, Harold (1971). The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry (Revised Edition). ISBN 9780801491177. http://books.google.com/books?id=jYa4akW01CwC.  Close readings of all of the Conversation Poems.
• Coleridge (1889). Shewell & Sanborn. 
• Eliot, T.S. (1956). "The Perfect Critic". Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot. Harcourt. 
• Harper, George McLean (1928 (reprinted 1969)). "Coleridge's Conversation Poems". Spirit of Delight. Ayer Publishing. ISBN 9780836900163. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/resources/conv_poems_essay.html. "The Poems of Friendship make yet another claim on our attention: they are among the supreme examples of a peculiar kind of poetry. Others not unlike them, though not surpassing them, are Ovid's `Cum subit illius tristissima noctis imago,' and several of the Canti of Leopardi." 
• Holmes, Richard (1982). Coleridge. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-287592-2. 
• Kenner, Hugh (1995). "Coleridge". Historical Fictions. University of Georgia Press. 
• Koelzer, Robert (Spring 2006). "Abrams Among the Nightingales: Revisiting the Greater Romantic Lyric". The Wordsworth Circle 37 (2): 67–71.  Detailed, recent discussion of the Conversation Poems.
• Magnuson, Paul (2002). "The 'Conversation' poems". in Newlyn, Lucy. The Cambridge Companion to Coleridge. Cambridge University Press. pp. 32–44. ISBN 0521659094. 
• Morley, Henry (1884). Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christobel, &c.. New York: Routledge. 
• Radley, Virginia L. (1966). Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Twayne Publishers, Inc.. 
• Riem Natale Antonella, The One Life. Coleridge and Hinduism, Jaipur-New Delhi, Rawat, 2005.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• Works by Samuel Taylor Coleridge at Project Gutenberg
• Archival material relating to Samuel Taylor Coleridge listed at the UK National Register of Archives
• Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Works of Coleridge at the University of Toronto
• Friends of Coleridge Society
• Walk the Coleridge Way in Exmoor National Park and the Quantocks AONB
• Goethe's Faustus, Coleridge's purported translation, illustrated.
•  John William Cousin, “Coleridge, Samuel Taylor,” in A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1910.
• Biographia Literaria and other works in HTML format.

v • d • e Samuel Taylor Coleridge Topics Early life · Opium use · Pantisocracy People Mary Evans · Charles Lamb · Robert Southey · William Wordsworth Early poetry and plays The Destruction of the Bastile · Dura Navis · Easter Holidays · The Fall of Robespierre · Monody on the Death of Chatterton · On Quitting School · Pain: Composed in Sickness · Songs of the Pixies Cambridge and Bristol poetry The Destiny of Nations · Lines on an Autumnal Evening · Lines Written at Shurton Bars · On Receiving an Account · Ode on the Departing Year · Religious Musings · To a Young Ass · To Fortune · To the River Otter Eminent Characters "To Erskine" · "To Burke" · "To Priestley" · "To Fayette" · "To Kosciusko" · "To Pitt" · "To Bowles" · "To Mrs Siddons" · "To Godwin" · "To Southey" · "To Sheridan" · "To Lord Stanhope" Conversation poems Dejection: An Ode · The Eolian Harp · Fears in Solitude · Frost at Midnight · The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem · Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement · This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison · To William Wordsworth Late poetry and Lyrical Ballads Christabel · "France: An Ode" · "Hymn Before Sunrise" · "Kubla Khan" · The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Biographical and other works Biographia Literaria · The Watchman

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This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.

Persondata
NAME	Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	English poet, critic, and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH	October 21, 1772
PLACE OF BIRTH	Ottery St Mary, England
DATE OF DEATH	July 25, 1834
PLACE OF DEATH	Highgate, England

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