Coleridge

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Coleridge was born October 21, 1772, Devon, England. He was the son of a vicar, but became a writer, poet, a brilliant speaker and a noted literary critic.
He died in London on July 25, 1834.

In the touch of this bosom there worketh a spell, Which is lord of thy utterance, Christabel!

A Brief Introduction

Coleridge was the son of a vicar. He was educated at Christ's Hospital, London, where he became friendly with Lamb and Leigh Hunt and went on to Jesus College Cambridge, where he failed to get a degree.

     

In the summer of 1794 Coleridge became friends with the future Poet Laureate Southey, with whom he wrote a verse drama. Together they formed a plan to establish a Pantisocracy, a Utopian community, in New England. They married sisters, but the scheme fell apart and they argued over money and politics.

Coleridge at this time was an ardent non-conformist and in 1796 preached throughout the West Country, deciding, however, not to become a minister. In 1797 he met William Wordsworth and for the next year and a half lived and worked closely with him, collaborating to produce the Lyrical Ballads. In 1798, disillusioned with English politics, Coleridge set out for Germany, where he studied Kant, Schiller and Scheling. On his return he moved to the Lake District to be with the Wordsworths, but suffered from his failing marriage and an increasing dependence on opium. He also fell hopelessly in love with Wordsworth's future sister-in-law, Sara Hutchinson, the inspiration for his love poems of this period, and separated from his wife in 1807.

Coleridge failed to restore his health or mental balance and quarrelled irrevocably with Wordsworth in 1810, alienating also Dorothy and Sara, with whom he had been editing a periodical The Friend. Winter 1813-14 brought a rebirth of his religious beliefs and for the first time he openly admitted his opium addiction and sought medical help. In 1816 he lodged in the London household of a young surgeon Dr James Gilman, where he was to remain for the rest of his life. The publication of Christabel in this year assured his reputation as a poet but the end of his life was taken up with religious and philosophical prose works.

William Woodsworth was both, a friend and a colleague of Coleridge. In 1798 they both published together their Lyrical Ballads. He sailed to Malta in search of better health and worked two years as secretary for the governor of Malta, and later traveled through Sicily and Italy. Coleridge returned back to England and published a philosophical criticism Biographia Literaria 1817: his theories were indeed considered his greatest of critical writing. Moreover, he wrote three volumes of The Friend in 1818. During this period, Coleridge suffered from neuralgic and rheumatic pains and took opium as a remedy. To compound to his ill health and suffering - his personal life was also in turmoil and eventually his marriage failed. He underwent treatments for his addiction under the care of Dr. James Gillman at his residence in London. He lived and carried out his work at the doctor's household for the better part of eighteen years.

Index to poems

1. Christabel
2. Constancy to an Ideal Object
3. Dejection: An Ode
4. Fragment 1: Sea-ward, white gleaming thro' the busy scud
5. Fragment 2: I know 'tis but a Dream, yet feel more anguish
6. Fragment 3: Come, come thou bleak December wind
7. Fragment 4: As some vast Tropic tree, itself a wood
8. Fragment 5: Whom should I choose for my Judge?
9. Fragment 6: The Moon, how definite its orb!
10. Fragment 7: When Hope but made Tranquillity be felt
11. Fragment 8: Thicker than rain-drops on November thorn
12. Fragment 9: The Netherlands
13. Fragment 10: The Three Sorts of Friends
14. France: An Ode
15. Frost at Midnight
16. The Good, Great Man
17. Hymn before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouni
18. Inscription for a Fountain on a Heath
19. The Knight's Tomb
20. Kubla Khan
21. The Lime-tree Bower my Prison
22. Love
23. Love's Apparition and Evanishment: An Allegoric Romance
24. Lyrical Ballads (1798) (co-authored with William Wordsworth)
25. On Donne's Poetry
26. The Pains of Sleep
27. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (text of 1834)
28. Something Childish, but Very Natural
29. To Asra
30. Work without Hope
31. Youth and Age

Index to prose

1. Biographia Literaria. Vol. I (1817)

Coleridge