Portraits of Coleridge
Published on 6. May 1999
Book
Hardback
196 pages
978-0-19-818469-0 (ISBN)
Description
What do the portraits of a great poet tell us about his life, his image of himself, and the ideas of him held by his friends and his public? Portraits of Coleridge attempts to answer this question with respect to the author of `The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and `Kubla Khan'. It also provides a critical and scholarly study of the portraits as works of art, considering the place of each in the career of the artist who produced it. All the life portraits are discussed in detail, catalogued, and (wherever there is an extant photograph) reproduced. As many verbal descriptions by contemporaries as possible are reprinted for the sake of comparison. A concluding essay on posthumous portraits of Coleridge considers how they reflect changes in the public's attitude toward their subject.
Both a contribution to the biography of Coleridge and an essay in the history of literary and artistic taste, this book is for readers interested in English poetry, in Romantic portraiture, and in the relationship between literature and the visual arts.
Both a contribution to the biography of Coleridge and an essay in the history of literary and artistic taste, this book is for readers interested in English poetry, in Romantic portraiture, and in the relationship between literature and the visual arts.
Reviews / Votes
Meticulously researched. * Nineteenth Century Studies * Morton Paley's Portraits of Coleridge is much more than just a bibliography, but it is a bibliography too: it lists, discusses, describes, and (where possible) reproduces all the known images of STC. The detail is absorbing, often comical; and the subject turns out to be oddly central, for Coleridge thought his face dismayingly symbolic of his character, so his remarks about these many portraits (which Paley quotes) constitute an oblique kind of self-commentary. * The Year's Work in English Studies * Morton Paley's collection of the visual material, the first attempt on this scale, is admirably thorough and detailed: it immediately establishes itself as standard. * The Wordsworth Circle *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
2 colour and 25 black and white halftones
Dimensions
Height: 224 mm
Width: 146 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
363 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-818469-0 (9780198184690)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Content
List of Illustrations ; Abbreviations ; A Coleridge Chronology ; Introduction: The Image of the Romantic Poet ; The Life Portraits of Coleridge ; After-Images: Posthumous Portraits of Coleridge ; Catalogue ; Supplementary Notes: missing or Non-Existent Portraits ; Bibliography ; Index