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Introduction Notes Introduction 1 Louis Althusser’s famous formulation of ‘interpolated subjects’ ‘subjected’ to deterministic social formations does not need rehearsing here. For the key texts see: ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’ in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001), and ‘Contradiction and overdetermination’ in For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster (London: Verso, 1996). 2 I recognize that this is easier said than done, but the hope is that by keeping moral judgement in abeyance I can better understand the motives for those constructing Coleridge by not over-investing in any particular Coleridge. As a matter of full disclosure, I should say that my preferred Coleridge is a democrat and reformer, albeit a gradualist, never a Tory in the reactionary anti-reform sense, not an adherent of any religious orthodoxy, one of the fin- est English poets in terms of representing consciousness and lyric subjectivity, and the finest neo-Kantian philosopher in English letters. 3 Notable examples of the Historicist turn in Coleridge studies are Nicholas Roe’s Wordsworth and Coleridge: the Radical Years (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003). The influence of Roe’s book is reflected in the Oxford University Press decision to republish it in 2003. An excellent early Historicist account is Paul Magnuson’s Coleridge and Wordsworth: a Lyrical Dialogue (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), and his Reading Public Romanticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) offers important readings of Coleridge’s various published ‘paratexts’. More recently there has been a conservative response to the Historicist accounts of Coleridge in the 1790s, notably Pamela Edwards’s The Statesman’s Science: History, Nature, Law in the Political Thought of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). 4 An argument can be made for Kathleen Coburn, but my analysis suggests that many of her volume decisions, not to mention attitude to constructing and enhancing Coleridge’s reputation, were derived from Sara’s lead. Ernest Hartley Coleridge, another candidate, was clearly repeating Sara’s conceptual work. Henry Nelson Coleridge was once considered the key figure, and this book will rigorously argue against that view, showing it to be a simple series of reading mistakes, confusing Sara’s wifely deference for actual work, and that his Coleridge was a strange parody of himself. Philosophically, Henry’s lack of self-awareness should disqualify him as a candidate on the grounds of a distinct lack of Coleridgean sensibility. 5 Commissioning Julius Hare to refute De Quincey’s plagiarism charge in the British Critic, for example. 6 All of the personal sketches in Biographia Literaria can be read in the way I’m suggesting, but given that the focus of the book is on the posthumous Coleridge, I have limited myself to a single instance that exemplifies the gen- eral pattern. 165 166 Notes 7 The success of Aids is a very complex subject taken up in earnest in chapter 5, and Marsh’s American edition is central to that discussion. His Introduction to the American edition was foundational in the development of Coleridge’s thought in America, and became the standard Introduction in both countries once Henry adopted it for the third edition. 8 Unlike Sara he did not know that Coleridge had completed the arrangement of Schelling’s ideas that later became chapter twelve in a notebook entry. Her argument proved successful as Ferrier wrote to a friend years later that Coleridge’s offence: ‘should be attributed to forgetfulness rather than wilful plagiarism’. Cited by his biographer Arthur Thomson in Ferrier of St Andrews: an Academic Tragedy (Edinburgh: Scottish Academical, 1985). Crucially, Sara did not insult his intelligence by claiming that there was no plagiarism. Her view was much closer to De Quincey’s than to Henry’s. 1 ‘Once a Jacobin Always a Jacobin’ 1 Essays on His Times, ed. David V. Erdman (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), pp.11–12. To avoid confusion with Sara Coleridge’s edition, references to the Erdman edition will be cited as Erdman. Sara Coleridge judiciously edited this piece of forthright radical provocation out of her edition. 2 Erdman, p.21. This phrase demonstrates the rhetorical use of bodily sensa- tion by describing the political malaise in Switzerland as symptoms of a diseased and suffering body. 3 Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examinerr, fourth edition, 2 vols. vol. 1 (London: J. Wright, 1799), pp.7–8. 4 Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, July 1800, p.594. Coleridge probably saw this essay as evidenced by his adopting its title, ‘the Literati and Literature of Germany’, in his own history of his German travels and interests in No. 18, the 21 December 1809 issue of The Friend. The Friend, ed. Barbara E. Rooke, vol. 2 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), p.239. 5 As evidenced by his self-justifications in ‘France: An Ode’. 6 Erdman, p.368. 7 Erdman, pp.372–3. 8 In fact, a disagreement over the extent of the levelling implications of the plan contributed to its failure. Coleridge was shocked when he discovered that Southey did not recognize the basic contradiction of taking servants with them to America. 9 For an excellent brief account of the still ongoing critical controversy sur- rounding Coleridge’s dissembling on the issue of property, see the headnote and notes for ‘Once a Jacobin Always a Jacobin’ in Coleridge’s Poetry and Prose, eds. Nicholas Hamli, Paul Magnuson and Raimonda Modiano (New York and London: Norton, 2004), pp.299–306. 10 The Sublime Object of Ideologyy (London: Verso, 1989). See especially the sec- tion ‘The Ideological Quilt’, pp.87–9. Žižek employs deconstruction and Lacanian psychoanalysis to describe ideological desire as the need to provide the fiction of certainty both at the level of indeterminable ‘floating signi- fiers’ and overdetermined social forces. Notes 167 11 The Friend, vol. 2, p.147. ‘Fanaticism’ is another term that cuts both ways: on the one hand denoting an excessively narrow ideological framework, while on the other denoting the capacity of overzealous feeling to overwhelm rational judgement. 12 See Complete Works of William Hazlittt, ed. P. P. Howe, vol. 19 (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1933), p.203. Hazlitt was incensed by Coleridge’s betrayal of the cause of reform, and attacked this political apostasy by recalling Coleridge’s former revolutionary idealism. Byron used a similar device in attacking Southey when he referred to him as the author of Wat Tylerr, Southey’s long suppressed Jacobin drama. 13 The Friend, vol. 1, pp.328–9. 14 The Friend, vol. 1, pp.334–5. 15 The Friend, vol. 1, p.326 and p.331. 16 Cited in Coleridge: The Critical Heritage, ed. J. R. de J. Jackson (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1970), p.343. Hereafter cited as Wilson. 17 Wilson, p.343. 18 Wilson, p.343. 19 Cited in Coleridge: The Critical Heritage, ed. J. R. de J. Jackson (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1970), p.309. Hereafter cited as Hazlitt. 20 Hazlitt, p.304. 21 Hazlitt, p.305. 22 Hazlitt, p.320. 23 Wilson, p.349. 24 Wilson, p.348. 25 Cited by Grevel Lindop in his biography of De Quincey, The Opium-Eater (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p.239. 26 Hazlitt, p.309. 27 Hazlitt, p.309. 28 Hazlitt, p.299. 29 Early recollections; chiefly relating to the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, during his long stay in Bristol (London: Longman, Rees & Co., 1837). The full title makes the focus on Bristol clear. I have used the expanded and revised 1848 editon Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southeyy (London: Houlston and Stoneman, 1848). The entries I cite are largely unchanged from the first edition, the real differences coming in his expansion of the Southey material and some score settling against critics of the first edition. If anything, his vehemence in defending Bristol intellectual history is more fierce. Passages will be cited as Reminiscences. 30 Biographia Literaria, ed. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), p.246. Hereafter cited as BL (CC), for Collected Coleridge, to differentiate it from Sara Coleridge’s edition to be discussed in detail in chapter 6. 31 BL (CC), p.248. 32 BL (CC), p.248. 33 BL (CC), p.250. 34 BL (CC), p.250. 35 Reminiscences, p.76. 36 Reminiscences, p.93. 168 Notes 37 Reminiscences, p.77. 38 Reminiscences, p.77. 39 Reminiscences, p.85. 40 Reminiscences, p.85. 41 Reminiscences, p.85. 42 Reminiscences, p.90. 43 Reminiscences, p.93. 44 BL (CC), p.249. Coleridge quoted the passage from the tenth issue of the 1809 version of The Friend, which in turn echoed the ‘Introductory Address’ from Conciones ad Populum, another example of his strategic redeployment of passages in different historical moments. The 1795 original descibed his political strategy in working for reform, while the Biographia restatement intended to suggest he had never been a radical Democrat. 45 Reminiscences, p.79. 46 BL (CC), p.249. 47 BL (CC), p.249. 48 Reminiscences, p.95. 49 Reminiscences, p.96. 2 ‘Ungentlemanly Productions’: De Quincey and Scandal 1 ‘Letter to Henry Nelson Coleridge [hereafter HNC], 11–12 September 1834’, Harry S. Ransom Center MS. The archive at the Harry S. Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin was organized by Carl L. Grantz as an unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Letters of Sara Coleridge: A Calendar and Index of Her Manuscript Correspondence in the University of Texas Libraryy (June, 1968). It includes brief descriptions of the letters, and maintains a good chronol- ogy; much of his folio numbering is still intact. Nonetheless, because there are some folio discrepancies, I will use addressee and date to identify the individual letters, and HRC to identify the archive.
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