The son of a clergyman, Samuel Taylor Coleridge studied at Christ's Hospital (1782-90) and Jesus College Cambridge. After a brief stint in the dragoons, Coleridge joined Robert Southey in Pantosocratic plans. The Wedgewoods rewarded his journalism with a pension in 1798, enabling a trip to Germany with Wordsworth (1798-99). Coleridge lived at Keswick (1802-04) before abandoning his family to work as secretary to the governor of Malta (1804-06); upon his return he lived at Grasmere and edited an unsuccessful periodical, the Friend (1809). Coleridge spent the remainder of his life in London, writing, conversing, lecturing, and suffering from melancholia and addiction.
TEXT RECORDS:
1794Monody on the Death of Chatterton.
1795An Allegoric Vision: Superstition, Religion, Atheism.
1795Effusion XXIV. In the Manner of Spenser. [Lines in the Manner of Spenser.]
1795[Allegory of Liberty and Famine.]
1796Songs of the Pixies.
1796To the Author of Poems published anonymously at Bristol, in September, 1795.
1797 ca.Christabel. [Part I.]
1798Fire, Famine, and Slaughter. A War Eclogue.
1798[The Raven.]
1803Introduction to the Sonnets.
1812 ca.Literary Remains: Coleridge on Spenser.
1817Biographia Literaria.
1827[Coleridge on Spenser, June 24, 1827.]
PUBLICATIONS:
The fall of Robespierre: an historic drama. 1794.
A moral and political lecture delivered at Bristol. 1795.
Conciones ad populum: or addresses to the people. 1795.
The plot discovered: or an address to the people, against ministerial treason. 1795.
An answer to a letter to Edward Long Fox MD. 1795.
Ode on the departing year. 1796.
Poems on various subjects. 1796, 1797, 1803.
The watchman. 1796.
Fears in solitude. 1798.
Lyrical ballads [with Wordsworth]. 1798.
Wallenstein: a drama in two parts translated from the German of Frederic Schiller. 1800.
The Friend: a literary, moral, and political weekly paper. 1809-10, 1818.
Omniana; or Horae Oitosiores [with Robert Southey]. 2 vols, 1812.
Remorse: a tragedy in five acts. 1813.
Christabel; Kubla Khan: a vision; The pains of sleep. 1816.
The statesman's manual ... a lay sermon. 1816.
Biographia literaria. 2 vols, 1817.
Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters: a lay sermon. 1817.
Sibylline leaves: a collection of poems. 1817.
Zapolya: A Christmas tale in two parts. 1817.
On method. 1818.
Aids to reflection. 1825.
Poetical works. 1828.
On the constitution of church and state. 1830.
The devil's walk: a poem [with Southey]. 1830.
Poetical works. 3 vols, 1834.
Specimens of the table-talk, ed. H. N. Coleridge. 2 vols, 1835.
Literary remains, ed. H. N. Coleridge. 4 vols, 1836-39.
Letters, conversations, and recollections, ed. T. Allsop. 2 vols, 1836.
Confessions of an inquiring spirit, ed. H. N. Coleridge. 1840.
Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life, ed. S. B. Watson. 1848.
Notes and lectures upon Shakespeare and some of the old poets and dramatists, with other literary remains, ed. Mrs. H. N. Coleridge. 2 vols, 1849.
Essays on his own time, ed. Sara Coleridge. 3 vols, 1850.
Complete works, ed. W. G. T. Shield. 7 vols, 1853.
Notes theological, political, and miscellaneous, ed. Derwent Coleridge. 2 vols, 1853.
Anima poetae, from the unpublished notebooks, ed. E. H. Coleridge. 1895.
Biographica epistolaris, being the biographical supplement of Biographia literaria, ed. A. Turnbull. 2 vols, 1911.
Complete poetical works, ed. W. H. Coleridge. 2 vols, 1912.
Coleridge on logic and learning, with selections from the unpublished manuscripts, ed. A. D. Snyder. 1929.
Shakespearean criticism, ed. T. M. Raysor. 2 vols, 1930.
Miscellaneous criticism, ed. T. M. Raysor. 1936.
The philosophical lectures, ed. Kathleen Coburn. 1949.
Coleridge on the seventeenth century, ed. Roberta Florence Brinkley. 1955.
Collected Letters, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs. 6 vols, 1956-73.
Notebooks, ed. Kathleen Coburn. 1957- .
Collected letters, ed. E. L. Griggs. 6 vols, 1956-68.
Collected works, ed. Kathleen Coburn. 1969- .
PROFILE AND
ASSOCIATES:
English
Anglican
Christ's Hospital
Jesus College Cambridge
secretary
poet
essayist
dramatist
journalist
The Watchman
Annual Anthology
The Critical Review
Blackwood's Magazine
Fraser's Magazine
The Friend
The Morning Post
The Morning Chronicle
The Courier
Friendship's Offering
Literary Souvenir
The Amulet
Washington Allston
John Anster
Thomas Beddoes
Rev. William Lisle Bowles
Rev. Henry Francis Cary
Henry Nelson Coleridge
Joseph Cottle
Humphry Davy
Thomas De Quincey
George Dyer
Sir Charles Abraham Elton
Barron Field
John Hookham Frere
William Godwin
William Hazlitt
John Abraham Heraud
Margaret Holford
Leigh Hunt
James Jennings
Charles Lamb
Charles Lloyd
Robert Lovell
Mary Russell Mitford
Dr. David Macbeth Moir
John Murray
Thomas Pringle
Bryan Waller Procter
Henry Crabb Robinson
Mary Robinson
Samuel Rogers
Thomas Sanderson
William Sotheby
Robert Southey
Thomas Noon Talfourd
William Taylor of Norwich
John Thelwall
John Horne Tooke
Alaric Alexander Watts
John Wilson
William Wordsworth
REFERENCE:
DNB; NCBEL; CBEL (3rd ed); DLB.
David Rivers, Literary Memoirs of Living Authors (1798); "Cantabridgiana. Mr. Coleridge" Monthly Magazine 17 (1 March 1804) 125; Peter L. Courtier, ed., Lyre of Love (1806); Poetical Register for 1806-07 (1811), 1808-09 (1812); "Samuel Taylor Coleridge" The Cabinet NS 1 (February 1809) 99-104 [portrait]; Biographia Dramatica (1812); John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes (1812-15); "Mr. Coleridge" The Champion (27 March 1814) 102-03; Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors (1816); "Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Southey" The Examiner (6 April 1817) 211-12; "Coleridge's Revolutionary Drama" Monthly Magazine 44 (September 1817) 108-09; "Observations on the Biographia Literaria" Blackwood's Magazine 2 (October 1817) 3-18; "An Estimate of the Literary Character and Works of Mr. Coleridge" Monthly Magazine 46 (December 1818) 407-09; "Samuel Taylor Coleridge" in New Monthly Magazine 11 (April 1819) 240-43 [portrait]; "Mr. Coleridge's Biographia Literaria" Monthly Magazine 49 (October 1819) 203-05; "Letter from Mr. Odoherty, enclosing the Third Part of Christabel" Blackwood's Magazine 5 (June 1819) 286-91; "Memoir of Mr. Coleridge" European Magazine 76 (July 1819) 4-8 [portrait]; "Coleridge" Blackwood's Magazine 6 (October 1819) 3-12; "Strictures on Messrs. Leigh Hunt, Coleridge, and Company" Literary Chronicle 2 (29 July 1820) 489-91; Henry Nelson Coleridge, "On Coleridge's Poetry" Etonian No. IV (1821); Leigh Hunt, "Mr. Coleridge" Examiner (21 October 1821) 664-67 [portrait]; "On Coleridge's Poetry" Etonian 1 (1822) 315-25; "Living Poets of Great Britain: Samuel Taylor Coleridge" Imperial Magazine 4 (December 1822) 1093-1103; "On the Poetry of Coleridge" Literary Speculum 2 (August 1822) 145-51 [portrait]; "S. T. Coleridge" La Belle Assemblee NS 27 (February 1823) 53-57; "S. T. Coleridge Esq." Ladies' Monthly Museum S3 17 (April-May 1823) 203-07, 256-59; William Hazlitt, Select British Poets (1824); Robert Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica (1824); William Hazlitt, "Mr. Coleridge" in Spirit of the Age (1825); A New Biographical Dictionary of 3000 Cotemporary Public Characters (1825); "Noctes Ambrosianae No. xxvii" Blackwood's Magazine 20 (1826) 96-97; "Personal and Literary Character of S. T. Coleridge" Philadelphia Monthly Magazine 1 (November 1827) 57-60; Living Poets of England: Specimens of the Living British Poets (1827); Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries (1828); "Samuel Taylor Coleridge" La Belle Assemblee S3 9-10 (June, August 1829) 235-40, 49-52; "Coleridge and Poetry" Westminster Review 12 (January 1830) 1-31; George B. Cheever, Studies in Poetry ... Elegant Extracts (1830); John Abraham Heraud, "Some Account of Coleridge's Philosophy" Fraser's Magazine 5 (June 1832) 585-97; The Georgian Era: Memoirs of the most Eminent Persons (1832-34); William Maginn, "Gallery of Literary Characters: Samuel Taylor, Esq." Fraser's Magazine 8 (July 1833) 64 [portrait]; Allan Cunningham, "Literature of the last Fifty Years" The Athenaeum (16 November 1833) 769; John Abraham Heraud, "Reminiscences of Coleridge" Fraser's Magazine 10 (October 1834) 379-403; "Coleridge's Poetical Works" Blackwood's Magazine 36 (October 1834) 542-70; obituary in Gentleman's Magazine NS 2 (November 1834) 544-49; John Gibson Lockhart, "Poetical Works of Coleridge" Quarterly Review 52 (1834); Thomas De Quincey, "Samuel Taylor Coleridge, by the English Opium-Eater" Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, NS 1 (September-November 1834) 509-520; 588-596; 685-690; NS 2 (January 1835) 2-10 (in Works 1889-90); "Coleridgeiana" Fraser's Magazine 11 (January 1835) 50-58; Thomas Allsop, Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2 vols (1836); Robert Aris Willmott, "S. T. Coleridge at Trinity" in Conversations at Cambridge (1836) 1-37; Joseph Cottle, Early Reminiscences, 2 vols (1837, 1847); James Gillman, Life of Coleridge (1838); S. C. Hall, in The Book of Gems (1838); John Stuart Mill, "Coleridge" London and Westminster Review 33 (1840) 257-302; Robert Chambers, Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1844); George Gilfillan, in Gallery of Literary Portraits (1845); William Howitt, Homes and Haunts of the ... British Poets (1847); David Macbeth Moir, Poetical Literature of the Past Half-Century (1851; 1856) 83-89; Mary Russell Mitford, "Authors Associated with Places" in Recollections (1852) 386-98; Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-71; 1882); Bryan Waller Procter, Charles Lamb, a Memoir (1866); William Jerdan, in Men I have Known (1866) 119-31; The English Poets, ed. Thomas Humphry Ward (1880); James Dykes Campbell, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: a Narrative of the Events of his Life (1894); Wright, West-Country Poets (1896) 102-06; Maclise Gallery (1898); Moulton, Library of Literary Criticism (1901-05); Reschke, Die Spenserstanze (1918) 28-31; Walter Graham, "Contemporary Critics on Coleridge, the Poet" PMLA 38 (1923) 97-111; John Livingston Lowes, The Road to Xanadu: a Study in the Ways of the Imagination (1927); Earl Leslie Griggs, "Coleridge and Mrs. Mary Robinson" Modern Language Notes 45 (1930) 90-95; Alan Lang Strout, "Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Wilson of Blackwood's Magazine" PMLA 48 (1933) 100-28; E. H. W. Meyerstein, "Chatterton, Coleridge, and Bristol" TLS (21 August 1937) 606; E. K. Chambers, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Biographical Study (1938); Lawrence Hanson, The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: the Early Years (1938); Venn and Venn, Alum. Cant. (1940-54); Richard W. Armour and Raymond F. Howes, eds., Coleridge the Talker: a Series of Contemporary Descriptions and Comments (1940); Charles E. Mounts, "The Influence of Spenser on Wordsworth and Coleridge" (Diss., Duke University, 1941); Charles E. Mounts, "Coleridge's Self-Identification with Spenserian Characters" Studies in Philology 47 (1950) 522-33; Kathleen Raine, Coleridge (1953); Renwick, OHEL (1963); Morris Marples, Romantics at School (1967); Walter Jackson Bate, Coleridge (1969); J. R. de J. Jackson, Coleridge: the Critical Heritage (1970); Norman Fruman, Coleridge, the Damaged Archangel (1971); Richard & Josephine Haven and Maurianne Adams, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: an Annotated Bibliography of Criticism and Scholarship (1976); Mary Lee Taylor Milton, Poetry of Coleridge: an annotated bibliography 1935-1970 (1981); Paul Magnuson, Coleridge and Wordsworth: a Lyrical Dialogue (1988); Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions (1990); Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Visions (1998); Chadwyck-Healey English Poetry Database (1995).
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