Samuel Taylor Coleridge : a literary life / William Christie.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Christie, William, 1952-

Series:

• Literary lives (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm))
• Literary lives

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
• Poets, English--19th century--Biography.
• Poets, English.

Genre:

• Biographies.

Physical Description:

xviii, 250 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke [England] ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Summary:

This literary life of the best-known and best-loved of all the major Romantic writers uses Coleridge's own 'literary life' - his famous Biographia Literaria - as its starting point and destination. The most sustained criticism and ambitious theory that had ever been attempted in English, the Biographia was Coleridge's major statement to an embattled literary culture in which he sought to define and defend, not just his own, but all imaginative life. Tracing the long and tortuous journey from Coleridge's intellectually precocious childhood and the annus mirabilis that gave us 'Kubla Khan', The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and 'Frost at Midnight', through his opium addiction and paralyzing sense of failure, to the literary criticism of rare insight and compelling beauty, William Christie offers a comprehensive and immensely readable account of Coleridge's life and works, including detailed discussion of the major poems and criticism.

Contents:

• 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.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-237) and index.

ISBN:

• 1403940665
• 9781403940667

OCLC:

69594081

Online:

• Contributor biographical information
• Publisher description