My own special edition of the poetry, Coleridge: Selected Poems, 1996, was conceived very much as a third companion volume to Early Visions and Darker Reflections. My ideal biography-reader – what Coleridge called the “great Mogul diamonds” – would constantly turn aside to read and re-read the poetry. In this edition, I have attached prefaces and extensive commentaries to a hundred and one of Coleridge’s poems intending to add a whole other “voice” or perspective to my biography. I believe passionately that one of the main purposes of a literary Life is to renew the appreciation of – no, the love of – a neglected body of literary Work, and make it alive for a new generation. My first and last loyalty has been to Coleridge the poet, in all his amazing manifestations. So much of his writing was poetry by other means.
Suggestions (sometimes provocations) for further study and exploration are contained passim in my footnotes, with a particular attempt to show how Coleridge’s fantastic range of ideas and intuitions rippled out through the nineteenth century, across many disciplines in both arts and sciences, and are still breaking on the shores of the twenty-first. As in Early Visions, I give below not a standard bibliography but a carefully chosen pharmacology of Coleridgean stimulants, to carry the reader onwards.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, Oxford, 1953.
Patricia Adair, The Waking Dream: A Study of Coleridge’s Poetry, London, 1967.
Rosemary Ashton, The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Critical Biography, Blackwells, 1996.
Isaiah Berlin, “The Apotheosis of the Romantic Will”, in The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas, Vintage, New York, 1992.
Martin Booth, Opium: A History, Simon and Schuster, 1996.
Marilyn Butler, Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries, Oxford, 1981.
John Beer, Romantic Influences: Contemporary, Victorian, Modern, Macmillan, 1993.
Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, 1822, edited by Alethea Hayter, Penguin, 1971.
Stephen Gill, William Wordsworth: A Life, Oxford, 1989.
Alethea Hayter, Opium and the Romantic Imagination, Faber, 1968.
John Horgan, The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age, Little Brown, 1997.
Ted Hughes, “The Snake in the Oak”, in Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose, Faber, 1994.
Molly Lefebure, The Bondage of Love: A Life of Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Gollancz, 1986.
Trevor H. Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Early Nineteenth-Century Science, Cambridge, 1981.
Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997.
John Stuart Mill, On Bentham and Coleridge, 1840; edited by F.R. Leavis, London, 1969.
David Newsome, Two Classes of Men: Platonism and English Romantic Thought, John Murray, 1974.
Morton D. Paley, Coleridge’s Later Poetry, Oxford, 1996.
Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich (editors), Drugs and Narcotics in History, Cambridge, 1995.
Camille Paglia, “The Daemon as Lesbian Vampire: Coleridge”, in Sexual Personae, Yale University Press, 1990.
Leslie Stephen, “Coleridge”, in Hours in a Library, vol 3, 1888.
Lewis Wolpert, “Creativity” in The Unnatural Nature of Science, Faber, 1992.
Virginia Woolf, “The Man at the Gate” and “Sara Coleridge”, in The Death of the Moth and Other Essays, Hogarth Press, 1942.
REFERENCES
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN REFERENCE NOTES
(1) Works by Coleridge
Letters – Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 6 vols, edited by E.L. Griggs, Oxford, 1956–71.
Notebooks – The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 4 double vols, (Texts and Notes), 1794–1826, edited by Kathleen Coburn and (vol. 4) Merten Christensen, Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press and Routledge, 1957–90.
S.P. – Coleridge: Selected Poems, edited by Richard Holmes, HarperCollins, 1996.
P.W. – Coleridge: Poetical Works, edited by E. H. Coleridge, Oxford, 1912, 1980.
Complete Poetical Works – The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by E.H. Coleridge, 2 vols (I, Poems; 2, Drama and Fragments), Oxford, 1912, 1975.
Biographia – Biographia Literaria, 2 vols, edited by James Engell and W. Jackson Bate, Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press and Routledge, 1983.
Friend – The Friend, 2 vols, edited by Barbara E. Rooke, Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press and Routledge, 1969.
Literary Lectures – Lectures 1808–1819: On Literature, 2 vols, edited by R.A. Foakes, Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press and Routledge, 1987.
Philosophical Lectures – The Philosophical Lectures of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by Kathleen Coburn, London, 1949.
Shakespearean Criticism – Shakespearean Criticism, 2 vols, edited by T.M. Raysor, Dent, 1960.
Essays – Essays on his Times, 3 vols, edited by D.V. Erdman, Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press and Routledge, 1978.
Lay Sermons – Lay Sermons, edited by R.J. White, Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press and Routledge, 1972.
Aids – Aids to Reflection, edited by John Beer, Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press and Routledge, 1993.
Church and State – On the Constitution of the Church and State, 2 vols, edited by E.E. Bostetter, H.J. Jackson, and J.R. de Jackson, Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press and Routledge, 1995.
Table Talk – The Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2 vols, edited by Carl. R. Woodring, Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press and Routledge, 1990.
Talker – Coleridge The Talker, edited by R.W. Armour and R.F. Howes, New York, 1940.
(2) Manuscript sources
Dove Cottage – Manuscripts relating to the Wordsworth-Coleridge circle, including John Morgan and Thomas Clarkson, held by the Wordsworth Trust, Dove Cottage, Grasmere, Cumbria.
British Library – Manuscripts held at the British Library, Euston Road, London: including Coleridge’s published Notebooks (1794–1826) Adds. Mss. 47, 496–47,527; and largely unpublished (1827–1834), Adds, Mss. 47,527–47,545; Tom Poole’s papers, Adds Mss 35,343–5; Daniel Stuart’s papers, Adds Mss 34,046; Sir Alexander Ball’s papers, 37,268; Nelson’s papers, 34,932; and Captain Pasley’s adventurous Life, Adds. Mss. 41,766.
Royal Institution – Manuscripts relating to the Davy–Coleridge circle, held by the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Albemarle Street, London.
Highgate Institution – Coleridgeana, documents and illustrations held at the Coleridge Archive, Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution, South Green, Highgate, London.
(3) Secondary Sources
Allston – The Life and Letters of Washington Allston, by J.B. Flagg, 1892.
Chambers – Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Biographical Study, by E.K. Chambers, Oxford, 1938.
Cottle – Early Recollections, chiefly relating to the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2 vols, by Joseph Cottle, 1837.
De Quincey – Thomas De Quincey, edited by Bonamy Dobrée, London, 1965.
Devonshire – The Story of a Devonshire House, by Lord Coleridge, 1905.
Gillman – The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, by James Gillman MD, 1838.
Hartley – The Poems of Hartley Coleridge; prefaced with a Memoir of his Life by his Brother, edited by Derwent Coleridge, 1851.
Hazlitt – William Hazlitt: Selected Writings, edited by Ronald Blythe, Penguin Classics, 1987.
Heritage – Coleridge: The Critical Heritage, edited by J.R. de J. Jackson, Routledge, 1970.
Hutchinson – The Letters of Sara Hutchinson (Asra): 1800 to 1835, edited by Kathleen Coburn, 1954.
Keats – Letters of John Keats, edited by Robert Gittings, Oxford, 1970.
Lamb – The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, 3 vols, edited by Edwin J. Marrs Jnr, Cornell University Press, 1975.
Minnow – A Minnow Among Tritons: Mrs S. T. Coleridge’s Letters to Tom Poole, edited by Stephen Potter, 1934.
Moorman – William Wordsworth: A Biography, 2 vols, by Mary Moorman, Oxford, 1965.
Poole – Thomas Poole and his Friends, 2 vols, by Mrs Henry Sandford, 1888.
Robinson, Books – Henry Crabb Robinson: On Books and their Writers, edited by Edith J. Morley, London, 1938.
Robinson, Letters – The Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson with the Wordsworth Circle, 2 vols, edited by Edith J. Morley, Oxford, 1927.
Robinson, Selections – Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb: Selections from the Remains of Henry Crabb Robinson, edited by Edith J. Morley, London, 1922.
Southey – New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols, edited by Kenneth Curry, New York, 1965.
Sultana – Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Malta and Italy, by Donald Sultana, New York, 1969.
Wordsworth, Middle Years – The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Middle Years, 1806–1820, 2 vols., edited by E. de Selincourt, Oxford, 1937; vol I. revised by Mary Moorman, 1969.
Wordsworth, Love Letters – The Love Letters of William and Mary Wordsworth, edited by Beth Darlington, Chatto, 1982.
REFERENCE NOTES
Chapter 1: Adrift in the Mediterranean
1Notebooks, II, 1993.
2Prelude (1805), Book VI, lines 249–56.
3Notebooks, II, 2018.
4Ibid, 1993.
5Ibid, 1996.
6Ibid, 1993N.
7Ibid, 2026.
8Ibid, 2016.
9Ibid, 2005.
10Ibid, 1997.
11Ibid, 2004.
12Ibid, 2001.
13Letters, III, p. 1123.
14Notebooks, II, 2024.
15Letters, II, p. 1127.
16Notebooks, II, 1993.
17Ibid, 2014.
18Ibid, 2014.
19Ibid, 1998.
20Ibid, 1999.
21Ibid, 2012.
22S.P., p. 60; P.W., p. 405.
23Notebooks, II, 2012.
24Ibid, 1998.
25Ibid, 2000.
26S.P., p. 185; P.W., p. 393.
27Letters, II, p. 1128.
28Ibid, p. 1127.
29Ibid, p. 1127.
30Notebooks, II, 2026.
31Ibid, 2026.
32Ibid, 1993n.
33Letters, II, p. 1129.
34Notebooks, II, 2044.
35Ibid, 2050.
36Letters, II, p. 1133.
37Notebooks, II, 2045.
38Ibid, 2045.
39Letters, II, p. 113–5.
40Notebooks, II, 2036.
41Ibid, 2050.
42Ibid, 2051.
43Ibid, 2060.
44Ibid, 2070.
45Ibid, 2064.
46Ibid, 2055.
47Ibid, 2063.
48Ibid, 2071.
49Ibid, 2084.
50Ibid, 2085.
51Ibid, 2085.
52Ibid, 2091.
53Ibid, 2091.
54Ibid, 2090.
55Ibid, 2086.
56Ibid, 2099.
57Letters, II, p. 1139.
58Friend, II, p. 253.
59Notebooks, II, 2101.
60Friend, II, pp. 250–3.
61Ibid, p. 252.
62Sultana, pp. 165–77.
63Letters, II, p. 1140–1
64Notebooks, II, 2118.
65Letters, II, p. 1143.
66Notebooks, II, 2153.
67Ibid, 2140.
68Letters, II, p. 1148.
69Notebooks, II, 2144.
70Ibid, 2174.
71Ibid, 2171.
72Ibid, 2171–6N.
73Letters, III, p. 482.
74Notebooks, II, 2172.
75Ibid, 2176 (my translation).
76Ibid, 2256.
77Ibid, 2189.
78Ibid, 2184.
79Ibid, 2192.
80Ibid, 2196.
81Ibid, 2245.
82Ibid, 2235.
83Ibid, 2238.
84Ibid, 2209 (probably deleted by Mrs Gillman).
85Ibid, 2356.
86Ibid, 2207.
87Sartori, Index to Opera Singers.
88Notebooks, II, 3404.
89Ibid, 3404.
90Ibid, 2237.
91Prelude (1805), Book X, lines 941–1039.
92Syracuse: Art, History, Landscape, Co. Grafa (Italy), 1985, p. 39.
93Notebooks, II, 2202, 2217.
94S.P., p. 244; P.W., p. 394.
95Notebooks, II, 2261.
96Notebooks, II, Notes, p. 411.
97Letters, II, p. 1151.
98Ibid, p. 1152.
99Ibid, p. 1155–6.
100Ibid, p. 1157.
101Notebooks, II, 2268.
102Letters, II, p. 1158–9.
103Ibid, p. 1159.
104Ibid, p. 1159.
105Notebooks, II, 2284.
106Ibid, 2293.
107Ibid, 2279.
108Letters. II, p. 1157.
109Sultana, pp. 27–71.
110Letters, II, p. 1163.
111Ibid, p. 1165.
112Ibid, p. 1169.
113Notebooks, II, Notes, mainly 15, 21, 22, 18.
114Notebooks, II, 2368.
115Ibid, 2373.
116Ibid, 2372.
117Ibid, 2387.
118Ibid, 2399.
119Ibid, 2398, 2495.
120Ibid, 2549.
121Ibid, 2398.
122Ibid, 2444.
123Ibid, 2453.
124Ibid, 2546.
125Ibid, 2420.
126The Early Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, edited by E. de Selincourt, Oxford, 1935, p. 438.
127Letters, II, p. 1170.
128Wordsworth, Early Letters, op. cit, p. 448.
129Notebooks, II, 2527.
130Ibid, 2517.
131Wordsworth, Early Letters, op. cit. p. 453.
132Notebooks, II, 2536.
133Ibid, 2556.
134Ibid, 2557.
135Ibid, 2541.
136Ibid, 2564.
137Letters, II, p. 1168.
138Ibid, p. 1168.
139Sultana, p. 336.
140Notebooks, II, 2583.
141Ibid, 2609.
142Ibid, 2600.
143S.P., p. 242; P.W., p. 396.
144Ibid, p. 243; Ibid, p. 396–7.
145Notebooks, II, 2606.
146Ibid, 2610.
147Ibid, 2614.
148Chambers, p. 186.
149Notebooks, II, 2606.
150Sultana, p. 272–4.
151Dove Cottage Mss, Decatur.
152Letters, II, p. 1169.
153Notebooks, II, 2628.
154Wordsworth, Early Letters, op. cit., pp. 510–12.
155Notebooks, II, 2638.
156Letters, II, p. 1171.
157Dove Cottage Mss, Ball.
158Notebooks, II, 2670–1.
159Ibid, 2672.
160Friend, II, p. 365.
161British Library, Add Mss 37, 268. f. 90–92.
162Wordsworth, Early Letters, op. cit., p. 560.
163Notebooks, II, 2828.
164Sultana, p. 385.
165Notebooks, II, 2791.
166Talker, pp. 433–4.
167Allston, p. 5.
168Notebooks, II, 2832.
169Ibid, 2815.
170Ibid, 2794N.
171Ibid, 2817.
172Letters, III, p. 351.
173Talker, p. 109.
174Biographia, II, pp. 116–8 and note.
175Sultana, p. 394.
176Notebooks, II, 2829.
177Ibid, 2833.
178Sultana, p. 392.
179Notebooks, II, 2843.
180Philosophical Lectures, pp. 193–4 (January 1819); Edoardo Zuccato, Coleridge in Italy, Cork University Press, 1996, pp. 93–5.
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