Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1772 - 1834

Born the son of a vicar in 1772 in Ottery St Mary, Devon, England, Coleridge was the youngest of a large family and had an unhappy childhood. Went to Jesus College, Cambridge with the intention of studying to enter the Church, he interrupted his education to enlist in the 15th Dragoons in 1793 but it wasn't to his taste and his family rescued him and returned to Cambridge. In 1794 he met Robert Southey and they subsequently collaborated on an historical play, The Fall of Robespierre.

Coleridge moved to Somerset in 1797 where hesubsequently met William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. Unquestionably, his association with Wordsworth was a source of inspiration and his finest works, in my view, The Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel and his Conversation Poems, were written during this period. The relationship with Wordsworth became strained in the early nineteenth century and Coleridge really never again reached the early heights in his poetics. His literary criticism articulated in Biographia Literaria did, however, become a standard to which subsequent critical theory owes much right up to the present day.

Addicted to opium for much of his life, he finally came to lodge with his Doctor in Hampstead where he spent the rest of his life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you want to read more why not add to your library through Amazon:

The Complete Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge
    

Coleridge: Early Visions by Richard Holmes
    

Coleridge: Darker Reflections by Richard Holmes
    

The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Samuel Taylor Coleridge