This literary life of the best-loved of all the major Romantic writers uses Coleridge's own 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. This book offers a reading of Coleridge and his life in the context of that culture and the institutions that comprised it, and is a 'must-read' for any student or scholar of Coleridge.

Praise

Winner of the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Biennial Prize for Literary Scholarship.

 
'It is remarkable that there is anything new to say about the canonical figure of Coleridge. But in this literary life William Christie says it...a brilliant, even dazzling contribution to international literary criticism' - Judges' report, NSW Premier's Literary Awards
 
'This literary life will prove to be one of the most thoughtful, generous and entertaining books ever written on Coleridge' - Professor Deirdre Coleman

About the Author(s)

William Christie

WILLIAM CHRISTIE is an associate professor at the University of Sydney, Australia, whose work in the area of Romantic studies has been widely published. His edition of The Letters of Francis Jeffrey to Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle came out in 2008, and he is also the author of The Edinburgh Review in Romantic Literary Culture: Mammoth and Megalonyx (2009).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Chronology
Prologue: Literary Life 1815
'The Discipline of His Taste at School': Christ's Hospital and Cambridge
'The Progress of His Opinions in Religion and Politics': The Radical Years
'A Known and Familiar Landscape': Conversations
'The Poet, Described in Ideal Perfection': Annus Mirabilis
'The Toil of Thinking': Private Notes and Public Newspapers
'To Rust Away': Lost Years, 1800-1806
'The One Proteus of the Fire and the Flood': Critic for Hire
'To Preserve the Soul Steady': The Sage of Highgate
Epilogue
Notes
Further Reading
Index