Selected Poetry

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was one of the most fascinating minds in European intellectual history, and a shaping influence in the development of English poetry. As a radical young poet in the years following the French Revolution, Coleridge collaborated with Wordsworth in "Lyrical Ballads" (1798) and was by turns dramatist, political journalist, dedicated reformer and literary philosopher, writing and experimenting with verse to the very end of his life. At the centre of this collection are those mature poems which Coleridge wrote while enjoying the intense friendship of Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. These include such blank verse "conversation" poems as "Fears in Solitude", "This Lime Tree Bower my Prison" and "Frost at Midnight" . At this time he also composed "Kubla Khan" and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", his two most famous works.
Demonstrating the diversity and versatility characteristic of the work of Coleridge, from early politically-inspired sonnets to eminent radicals, to an epitaph he composed for himself in the penultimate year of life, this edition is supplemented by an introduction and notes, providing a comprehensive selection of Coleridge's finest works.