Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in the English town of Ottery St Mary, where his father was a vicar, in 1772. The youngest of ten children, he attended school with Charles Lamb and spent two years at Jesus College, Cambridge where he was introduced to radical politics and theology by the poet Robert Southey. He first met William Wordsworth in 1795 and they published a joint poetry collection, Lyrical Ballads, in 1798; this highly praised volume, which started the English Romantic Movement, contained the first version of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Alongside finding success with his poetry, Coleridge’s critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential. However much of his life was blighted by illness, opium addiction, financial problems and depression. He died of heart failure in London in 1834.