COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR

by Thomas De Quincey De Quincey was well acquainted, early in life, with Coleridge and other poets of the time, and for the Eighth Edition of Britannica (1852-60) he wrote a number of insightful biographies. The roots of his estrangement later in life from many of his early companions may be in part inferred from his sustained attention in this piece to the question of Coleridge's possible plagiarism. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor born Oct. 21, 1772, Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, Eng. died July 25, 1834, Highgate, near London Samuel Taylor Coleridge, detail of an oil painting by Washington Allston, 1814; in the National English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher. His Lyrical Ballads, written with William Wordsworth, heralded the English Romantic movement, and his Biographia Literaria (1817) is the most significant work of general literary criticism produced in the English Romantic period. Additional reading Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions (1990), covers his life up to 1804. Oswald Doughty, Perturbed Spirit: The Life and Personality of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1981), is a comprehensive biography. E.K. Chambers, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1938, reprinted 1978), gives a good account of the events of his life; and W. Jackson Bate, Coleridge (1968, reprinted 1987), is a brief account. Other biographical studies include Norman Fruman, Coleridge, the Damaged Archangel (1971); and John Cornwell, Coleridge, Poet and Revolutionary, 17721804: A Critical Biography (1973). Among the studies of his poetry are John Livingston Lowes, The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination (1927, reprinted 1986); Stephen Potter, Coleridge and S.T.C. (1935, reissued 1965); G. Wilson Knight, The Starlit Dome: Studies in the Poetry of Vision (1941, reissued 1971); Stephen Prickett, Coleridge and Wordsworth: The Poetry of Growth (1970, reprinted 1980); John B. Beer (ed.), Coleridge's Variety: Bicentenary Studies (1974); and J. Robert Barth, Coleridge and the Power of Love (1988). The poet's politics are examined in Nicholas Roe, Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Radical Years (1988); and John Morrow, Coleridge's Political Thought (1990).