Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English lyrical poet, philosopher, and critic whose Lyrical Ballads written with William Wordsworth in 1798, started the English Romantic movement. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Ottery St Mary, Devonshire, in 1772 and was the youngest son. After his father's death, he studied at Christ's Hospital School in London. In Cambridge, Coleridge met the future poet laureate Robert Southey. He moved with Southey to Bristol to establish a community, but failed to do so. In 1795 he married the sister of Southey's fiance Sara Fricker, whom he did not really love. Coleridge's collection Poems On Various Subjects was published in 1796. That same year he began the publication of a short-lived liberal political periodical The Watchman. He became close friends with Dorothy and William Wordsworth. The result of that friendship was Lyrical Ballads. These poems set a new style by using everyday language and fresh ways of describing nature. Unpleased with political developments in France, Coleridge visited Germany in 1798-99 with Dorothy and William Wordsworth, and grew and interest for the works of Immanuel Kant. He studied philosophy at Gttingen University and mastered the German language. At the end of 1799 Coleridge fell in love with Sara Hutchinson, the sister of Wordsworth's fiance, and devoted his work "Dejection: An Ode" to her. During these years Coleridge also began to compile his Notebooks, recording daily thoughts of his life. In 1809-10 he wrote and edited with Sara Hutchinson the literary and political magazine The Friend. From 1808 to 1818 he gave several lectures, mainly in London, and was considered the greatest of Shakespearean critics. In 1810 Coleridge's friendship with Wordsworth came to a crisis, and the two poets grew apart. Suffering from neuralgic and rheumatic pains, Coleridge became addicted to opium. During the following years he lived on the verge of suicide in London. He found a permanent shelter in Highgate, in the household of Dr. James Gillman. During this time he rarely left the house. In 1816 the unfinished poems "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan" were published, and the following year, "Sibylline Leaves" appeared. His most important production during this period was the Biographia Literaria, written in 1817. After that, Coleridge devoted himself to theological and politico-sociological works. In 1824, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He died on July 25, 1834 in Highgate. http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/292 http://incompetech.com/authors/coleridge/ http://www.biography.com/people/samuel-taylor-coleridge-9253238