Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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. □

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772–1834), youngest son of the vicar of Ottery St Mary, Devon, was destined for the church. He was educated at Christ's Hospital school, London, where he attracted a circle of young admirers including Leigh Hunt and Lamb. At Jesus College, Cambridge (1792–4), a brilliant career in classics was diverted by French revolutionary politics, heavy drinking, and an unhappy love affair, which led Coleridge to enlist in desperation in the 15th Light Dragoons under the name of Comberbache. He met Southey in 1794 and together they invented Pantisocracy, a scheme to set up a commune in New England. Coleridge now published his first poetry in the Morning Chronicle, a series of sonnets to eminent radicals including Godwin and J. Priestley. To finance Pantisocracy, he and Southey gave political lectures in Bristol and collaborated on a verse-drama, The Fall of Robespierre (1794); they also simultaneously courted and married two sisters, Sara and Edith Fricker. After quarrelling with Southey, Coleridge retired with Sara to a cottage at Clevedon where their first son Hartley (above), named after the philosopher David Hartley, was born. Here Coleridge edited a radical Christian journal, the Watchman, and published Poems on Various Subjects (1796).

In June 1797 Coleridge met Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. The intense friendship that sprang up between the three shaped their lives for the next 14 years and proved one of the most creative partnerships in English Romanticism. Between July 1797 and Sept. 1798 they lived and worked intimately together; the Coleridges at Nether Stowey, Somerset, and the Wordsworths two miles away at Alfoxden. Here Coleridge wrote a moving series of blank verse ‘conversation’ poems, addressed to his friends: ‘Fears in Solitude’, ‘This Lime Tree Bower My Prison’, ‘The Nightingale’, and ‘Frost at Midnight’. He also composed ‘Kubla Khan’, and at Wordsworth's suggestion wrote ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, and started three other ballads including ‘Christabel’. A selection from their work appeared as the Lyrical Ballads (1798), intended as an ‘experiment’ in English poetry, which achieved a revolution in literary taste and sensibility.

Disenchanted with political developments (‘France: an Ode’), Coleridge now turned towards Germany, where he spent ten months (1798–9), partly in the company of the Words-worths, studying Kant, Schiller, and Schelling. Returned to London, he translated Schiller's verse play Wallenstein and engaged in journalism for D. Stuart of the Morning Post. In 1800 he moved to the Lake District with the Wordsworths, but his marriage was increasingly unhappy and he had fallen in love with Wordsworth's future sister-in-law Sara Hutchinson, as recorded in ‘Love’ (1799) and other ‘Asra’ poems. His use of opium now became a crippling addiction. Many of these difficulties are examined in ‘Dejection: an Ode’ (1802). During these years he also began to compile his Notebooks, daily meditations on his life, writing, and dreams, which have proved among his most enduring and moving works. In 1804 Coleridge went abroad; he worked for two years as secretary to the governor of wartime Malta, and later travelled through Sicily and Italy. In 1807 he separated from his wife and went to live again with the Wordsworths and Sara Hutchinson at Coleorton, Leicestershire. In 1808, though ill, Coleridge began his series of Lectures on Poetry and Drama, which as his Shakespearian Criticism introduced new concepts of ‘organic’ form and dramatic psychology. In 1809–10 he wrote and edited with Sara Hutchinson's help a second periodical, the Friend. The intellectual effort, combined with the struggle against opium, shattered his circle of friends: Sara left for Wales, Dorothy grew estranged, he quarrelled irrevocably with Wordsworth. Coleridge fled to London, where between 1811 and 1814 he was on the verge of suicide, sustained only by his friends the Morgans, who took him to live in Calne, Wiltshire. His play Remorse had a succès d'estime at Drury Lane (1813). After a physical and spiritual crisis in the winter of 1813–14, Coleridge achieved a rebirth of his Christian beliefs, submitted himself to a series of medical regimes, and began slowly to write again. To this period belong his essay ‘on the Principles of Genial Criticism’, adapted from Kant, and his Biographia Literaria (1817).

In the spring of 1816 Coleridge found permanent harbour in the household of Dr James Gillman. Christabel and Other Poems, which included ‘Kubla Khan’ and ‘The Pains of Sleep’, was published in 1816; Sibylline Leaves, the first edition of his collected poems, in 1817 (expanded 1828 and 1834); Zapolya in 1817. His Aids to Reflection (1825) had a fruitful influence on Sterling, Kingsley, and the young Christian Socialists; while his Church and State (1830), a short monograph on the concept of a national ‘Culture’ and the ‘clerisy’ responsible for it, was taken up by M. Arnold and Newman. Coleridge also gave lectures on general literature and philosophy, which have survived in the form of notes and shorthand reports.

These later works develop Coleridge's leading critical ideas, concerning Imagination and Fancy; Reason and Understanding; Symbolism and Allegory; Organic and Mechanical Form; Culture and Civilization. The dialectical way he expresses them is one of his clearest debts to German Romantic philosophy; his final position is that of a Romantic conservative and Christian radical. He also wrote some haunting late poems, ‘Youth and Age’, ‘Limbo’, ‘Work Without Hope’, and ‘Constancy to an Ideal Object’. He died of heart failure at 3 The Grove, Highgate. The last echoes of his inspired conversation were captured in Table Talk (1836).

Coleridge has been variously criticized as a political turncoat, a drug addict, a plagiarist, and a mystic humbug, whose wrecked career left nothing but a handful of magical early poems. But the shaping influence of his highly imaginative criticism is now generally accepted, and his position (with Wordsworth) as one of the two great progenitors of the English Romantic spirit is assured. There is a recent biography by Richard Holmes (2 vols, 1989, 1998).

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’ and, although relations became strained, Coleridge's initial contribution cannot be gainsaid. 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’. As literary critic, if not the originator of the philosophical method he aspired to in Biographia literaria (1817), he gives a subtler account of language and morality than his predecessors. The charge of plagiarism from Schlegel, Schelling, and the German Idealists cannot be dismissed by his airy confidence that ‘Truth is a divine ventriloquist’, but there is a continuity in his thought from before his visit to Germany in 1798, when Immanuel Kant was still ‘utterly unintelligible’. Though no friend to Pitt's ministry, his ‘baby trumpet of sedition’ was already muted, and the political journalism of the Watchman (1796) and the Friend (1809) depended on ‘placing the questions of the day in a moral point of view’. His last substantial work, On the Constitution of Church and State (1830), finds him staunchly defending them as ‘two poles of the same magnet’.

John Saunders

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772–1834) English poet, critic, and philosopher. In 1798 Coleridge and William Wordsworth published Lyrical Ballads, a fundamental work of English Romanticism that opened with Coleridge's ballad “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Christabel and Other Poems (1816) included the ballad “Christabel” and the fragment “Kubla Khan”. In 1800 Coleridge moved to the Lake District, where he fell in love with Wordsworth's sister-in-law Sara Hutchinson. Battling with opium-addiction, Coleridge produced little poetry in his later life, concentrating instead on his lectures. Biographia Literaria (1817) is both a meditation on German philosophy and a work of literary criticism.

http://lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge

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). Poet and thinker. Born at Ottery St Mary in Devon, he studied (somewhat chaotically) at Cambridge where he met William Wordsworth. With him he published Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Already he had, with Robert Southey, attempted to set up a communal society, Pantisocracy, putting into practice the ideals of the French Revolution. In 1798, he went to Germany to study Kant, and came under the influence of Schiller and Goethe. On his return he lectured and wrote. In religion he represents the Romantic reaction against both rationalism and dogmatic religious systems, seeing the heart of religion in human religious need. He is sometimes called the ‘father of the Broad Church’.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772–1834), poet and thinker. He published the Lyrical Ballads, with W. Wordsworth, in 1798, his most famous contribution being ‘The Ancient Mariner’. Soon afterwards he wrote the last of his great poems, including the second part of ‘Christabel’ (1800) and the ‘Ode to Dejection’ (1802).

Coleridge preached the need of man for a spiritual interpretation of life and the universe against a fossilized Protestant orthodoxy as well as against the materialist and rationalist trends of his age. His conviction that Christianity is primarily ethical led him to believe in the possibility of a unification of Christendom on a wide basis of common tenets.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772–1834), English poet, critic, and philosopher, author of several plays in verse, one of which, Remorse, written in 1797 as Osorio, was produced at Drury Lane in 1813 with moderate success. The others, which include several translations from the German, remained unacted, except for a Christmas entertainment which, with alterations by Dibdin, was produced in 1818. Coleridge's chief importance in theatre history lies in his critical and editorial work on Shakespeare, though he was handicapped by ignorance of Elizabethan stage conditions, which the Shakespearian scholar Malone was only just bringing to light.