SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE RUDYARD KIPLING Cedric Watts John Worthen JOSEPH CONRAD D

Literary Lives Founding Editor: Richard Dutton, Professor of English, Lancaster University This series offers stimulating accounts of the literary careers of the most admired and influential English-language authors. Volumes follow the outline of the writer's working lives, not in the spirit of traditional biography, but aiming to trace the professional, publishing and social contexts which shaped their writing. Published titles include: Clinton Machann Harold Pagliaro MATTHEW ARNOLD HENRY FIELDING Jan Fergus Andrew Hook JANE AUSTEN F. SCOTT FITZGERALD John Beer Mary Lago WILLIAM BLAKE E. M. FORSTER Tom Winnifrith and Edward Chitham Shirley Foster CHARLOTTE AND EMILY BRONTE ELIZABETH GASKELL Sarah Wood Neil Sinyard ROBERT BROWNING GRAHAM GREENE Janice Farrar Thaddeus James Gibson FRANCES BURNEY THOMAS HARDY Caroline Franklin Cristina Malcolmson BYRON GEORGE HERBERT Sarah Gamble Gerald Roberts ANGELA CARTER GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Nancy A. Walker Kenneth Graham KATE CHOPIN HENRY JAMES Roger Sales W David Kaye JOHN CLARE BEN JONSON William Christie Phillip Mallett SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE RUDYARD KIPLING Cedric Watts John Worthen JOSEPH CONRAD D. H. LAWRENCE Grahame Smith Angela Smith CHARLES DICKENS KATHERINE MANSFIELD George Parfitt Lisa Hopkins JOHN DONNE CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE Paul Hammond Cedric C. Brown JOHN DRYDEN JOHN MILTON Kerry McSweeney Peter Davison GEORGE ELIOT GEORGE ORWELL Tony Sharpe Linda Wagner-Martin T. S. ELIOT SYLVIA PLATH Felicity Rosslyn Joseph McMinn ALEXANDER POPE JONATHAN SWIFT Ira B. Nadel Leonee Ormond EZRA POUND ALFRED TENNYSON Richard Dutton Peter Shillingsburg WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY John Williams David Wykes MARY SHELLEY EVELYN WAUGH Michael O'Neill Caroline Franklin PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT Gary Waller John Mepham EDMUND SPENSER VIRGINIA WOOLF Tony Sharpe John Williams WALLACE STEVENS WILLIAM WORDSWORTH William Gray Alasdair D. F. Macrae ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON W. B. YEATS Literary Lives Series Standing Order ISBN 978-0-333-71486-7 hardcover Series Standing Order ISBN 978-0-333-80334-9 paperback (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Samuel Taylor Coleridge A Literary Life William Christie © William Christie 2007 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007978-1-4039-4066-7 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the * Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London wn 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-0-230-S8096-1 ISBN 978-0-230-62785-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-0-230-62785-7 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Christie, William, 1952- Samuel Taylor Coleridge: a literary life /William Christie. p. cm. - (Literary lives) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4039-4066-7 (cloth) 1. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.2. Poets, English - 19th century- Biography. I. Title. II. Series: Literary lives (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm)) PR4483.C524 2006 821'.7-dc22 2006046063 [B] 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 Transferred to digital printing in 2007. For my mother Diana Christie (nee Silcock) with love Contents Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations x Chronology xiv Prologue: Literary Life, 1815 1 1. 'The Discipline of His Taste at School': Christ's Hospital and Cambridge 14 2. 'The Progress of His Opinions in Religion and Politics': The Radical Years 35 3. 'A Known and Familiar Landscape': Conversations 59 4. 'The Poet, Described in Ideal Perfection': Annus Mirabilis 85 5. 'The Toil of Thinking': Private Notes and Public Newspapers 116 6. 'To Rust Away': The Lost Years 1800-6 139 7. 'The One Proteus of the Fire and the Flood': Critic for Hire 165 8. 'To Preserve the Soul Steady': The Sage of Highgate 188 Epilogue 212 Notes 215 Further Reading 232 Index 238 vii Acknowledgements My greatest debts are to Coleridge's biographers: to Coleridge himself, in his autobiographical letters to Tom Poole of 1797-8 and in the Biographia Literaria, and thereafter to a host of dedicated Coleridgeans, from Joseph Cottle and James Gillman through to Richard Holmes's generous double vol ume biography, which straddles Rosemary Ashton's scrupulous account in the Blackwell Critical Biographies series. To these last two, in particular, and to the many editors of The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Bollingen Series LXXV, I am deeply indebted. This could not have been written without the advice and encouragement of many of my colleagues here at the University of Sydney, but again I single out two: Deirdre Coleman and Margaret Harris have been especially atten tive and generous. I am also indebted to the Research Institute in the Humanities and Social Sciences (RIHSS) here at the University of Sydney for a fellowship granting me relief from some of my teaching during a vital period of the study's gestation. Paula Kennedy at Palgrave Macmillan has been enthusiastic about the pro ject from the beginning and helped make it all worthwhile, and myoid teacher, Geoffrey Little, kindly offered to read through the final draft. Finally, thanks to my wife Patrice and daughter Ellen for (on top of every thing else) making the trip to the UK without me to allow me to finish the book, and to my other daughters, Francesca and Vita, and to my grandson Archie, for putting up with less time than they deserve. ix Abbreviations References to the following will be found in parentheses within the body of the text: BL Biographia Literaria or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 7, ed. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate, in 2 vols (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983). CL The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs, in 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956-71). CN Collected Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Bollingen Series L, ed. Kathleen Coburn, with Merton Christensen and Anthony John Harding, in 5 double vols (New York, Princeton, and London: Princeton University Press and Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957-2002). N Coleridge's Notebooks: A Selection, ed. Seamus Perry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) [the text of Perry's edition is preferred for all those notes included in his selection]. References to the following will be found in the endnotes: Ashton Rosemary Ashton, The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). Church and State (cq On the Constitution of the Church and State, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 10, ed. John Colmer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976). Coleridge: The Critical Coleridge: The Critical Heritage, ed. ]. R. de Heritage ]. Jackson (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970). Essays on His Times (cq Essays on His Times in The Morning Post and The Courier, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 3, ed. David V. Erdman, in 3 vols (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978). The Friend (cq The Friend, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 4, ed. Barbara E. Rooke, in 2 vols (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969). Gillman James Gillman, The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London: William Pickering, 1838). x Abbreviations xi HCR Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and Their Writers, ed. Edith ]. Morley, in 3 vols (London:]. M. Dent & Sons, 1938). Holmes, Darker Reflections Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections (London: HarperCollins, 1998). Holmes, Early Visions Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989). Lamb Letters The Letters of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb, ed. Edwin W. Marrs Jr, in 3 vols (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975-8). Lay Sermons (cq Lay Sermons, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 6, ed. R. J. White (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972). Lectures 1795 (cq Lectures 1795 On Politics and Religion, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1, ed. Lewis Patton and Peter Mann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971). Lectures on Literature (cq Lectures 1808-1819 On Literature, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,S, ed. R. A. Foakes, in 2 vols (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987). Lectures on Philosophy (cq Lectures 1808-1819 On the History of Philosophy, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 8, ed.]. R. de]. Jackson, in 2 vols (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). Marginalia (cq Marginalia, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 12, ed. H. ]. Jackson and George Whalley, in 6 vols (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980-2001).

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