This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights and duplication or sale of all or part is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for research, private study, criticism/review or educational purposes. Electronic or print copies are for your own personal, non- commercial use and shall not be passed to any other individual. No quotation may be published without proper acknowledgement. For any other use, or to quote extensively from the work, permission must be obtained from the copyright holder/s. Writing spaces: the Coleridge family’s agoraphobic poetics, 1796-1898 This electronic version of the thesis has been edited solely to ensure compliance with copyright legislation and excluded material is referenced in the text. The full, final, examined and awarded version of the thesis is available for consultation in hard copy via the University Library Joanna E. Taylor Keele University June 2016 This thesis is submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature. Abstract In recent years there has been a rapid growth in interest in the lives and writings of the children of major Romantic poets. Often, this work has suggested that the children felt themselves to be overshadowed by their forebears in ways which had problematic implications for their creative independence. In this thesis I explore the construction of writing spaces – physical, imaginary, textual and material – in the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1772-1834) children and grandchildren: Hartley (1796-1849), Derwent (1800-1883), Sara (1802-1852), Derwent Moultrie (1828- 1880), Edith (1832-1911) and Ernest Hartley (1846-1920). I suggest that these writers adopted and adapted STC’s philosophic and poetic systems and employed them to advance their own unique poetics, which I take to include their imaginative approach more generally as well as their poetry specifically. The spatial readings I propose offer an alternative to the customary temporal focus of an ‘anxiety of influence’. I argue that the spatial imagination on display in this family’s works enabled each writer to interact with other writers in the family network without compromising their creative independence. In advancing an agoraphobic poetics, I suggest that the Coleridge family productively subverted their influence anxieties and employed them to emphasise their imaginative uniqueness. Their responses to the real world offer an important method of considering their place in their literary community, and these responses rely upon the careful formation and articulation of boundaries. These limits are explored in their letters and private writings, redrawn in the form of maps, expressed through poetic form and invocations of other poets, and visualised through the act of writing. This thesis demonstrates that these writers’ apparent anxiety masked confident assertions of their poetic place as important nineteenth-century writers in their own rights. ii Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................................................... v Coleridge Family Tree .......................................................................................................................... viii List of Figures ............................................................................................................................................. ix Abbreviations .............................................................................................................................................. x Note on naming conventions ............................................................................................................ xiii Introduction: the Coleridge family’s agoraphobic interactions ............................................... 1 I. What ‘a Coleridge ought to be’ .............................................................................................. 10 II. A ‘mode or form of perceiving’: spatial theory and the Coleridges ......................... 15 Chapter 1: Coarctated boundaries: the Coleridges’ agoraphobic poetics ......................... 22 I. Romantic agoraphobia ............................................................................................................ 29 II. STC and ‘the juxtaposition of Space’ ................................................................................... 42 III. The ‘subtle intricate labyrinth’ of the body at home ............................................... 60 IV. The ‘black vulture’ and the canary: Sara’s phobic creativity ................................ 66 V. Being ‘guarded by dragons’: Hartley’s immense containment ................................ 78 VI. ‘Images for Shapes’: Derwent’s architectural imaginings ..................................... 89 Chapter 2: Hartley, Sara and the construction of Fairyland................................................. 105 I. A ‘history only of departed things’ .................................................................................... 109 II. ‘[E]xpect nothing’: the Fancy versus the Imagination ............................................... 114 III. ‘[A]n immense heap of little things’: the sublime in littleness .......................... 119 iii IV. A ‘magic picture’: Paradise lost and Fairyland reclaimed ................................... 129 V. The ‘faery voyager’ .................................................................................................................. 136 VI. Hartley’s Fairyland ............................................................................................................. 143 VII. The Sylph of Ulswater’s ‘airy dreams’ ......................................................................... 157 Chapter 3: Mapping Fairyland: Phantasmion and Ejuxria .................................................... 170 I. The early nineteenth-century mapping industry ........................................................ 178 II. Establishing boundaries: the Lake District as Fairyland .......................................... 186 III. (Re-)mapping the ‘native vale’: Phantasmion in the Lake District ................... 198 IV. A ‘ruined fragment of a worn-out world’: Hartley and Ejuxria ......................... 227 Chapter 4: The ‘pale and imitative age’: Derwent Moultrie, Edith and Ernest Hartley Coleridge .................................................................................................................................................. 248 I. Critical approaches to nineteenth-century manuscript culture ............................ 258 II. ‘[B]etter materials for the sceptic’: STC’s manuscript legacy ................................. 265 III. ‘No poet’: Edith’s manuscript verse ............................................................................. 273 IV. ‘[T]his poor verse’: responding to STC in Ernest’s poetry .................................. 294 V. ‘An image of unbounded space’: Ernest’s marginal identity................................... 304 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 325 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................... 329 The Coleridge family manuscripts and publications .......................................................... 329 Books and periodicals .................................................................................................................... 333 iv Acknowledgments My first thanks must go to my supervisors. Jonathon Shears has changed the way I think and, particularly, read, and this thesis could not have taken the shape it has without his attention, patience and reminders to listen to his advice. David Amigoni has been supportive and understanding throughout this process, with much more than only the PhD, and I thank him for his willingness to find time somewhere in his day whenever it is needed. I could not have asked for more generous supervisors, or for better examples of how academics should be. I am grateful to the AHRC for funding this thesis, and to bursaries from BARS towards an archival trip to the Jerwood Centre and from the Keele Postgraduate Association for funds towards manuscript facsimiles. I thank the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, the Wordsworth Trust, Leeds University Library and Priscilla Cassam for permission to quote from the Coleridge family’s manuscripts. Chawton House Library provided me with a Visiting Fellowship in the second year of this thesis, and I gained much from their generosity and friendliness. Special thanks go to my fellow Fellows, Jessica Cook, Nicola Parsons and Alison Winch, whose conversations were invaluable to the formation of this work at a crucial stage in its development. Many more people than I can mention here deserve my thanks and gratitude for conversation, community and driving my thoughts – often unwittingly – forward. Keele has been a nurturing, beautiful place in which to pursue this study, and the community it has provided throughout has been fundamental for my development both personally and academically. Particular thanks go to the Moser office