Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
England

In many ways doth the full heart reveal
The presence of the love it would conceal.
--Motto to Poems written in Later Life.

As a child, Colderidge had a bright, and highly imaginative mind that he nurtured through spending time with his father and reading fairy tales. Under his headmaster, Boyer, Coleridge excelled in Latin and Greek and developed a taste for the higher caliber of classical and English writers. He consistently challenged himself with difficult literature; the Sonnets of William Bowles influenced him greatly in his own literary and poetical pursuits. During his school-days in London, he befriended fellow poet Charles Lamb. His years in college in Cambridge defined his unconventional disposition. Through his unfortunate financial and romantic situations, he consequently enlisted in the King's Light Dragoons under a false name. His service was limited, as he was discharged and made to return to Cambridge. Meeting Robert Southey at Oxford, Coleridge formed his image of the ideal society. A year later, in 1795, Coleridge was introduced to Wordsworth and following his marrriage, settled with his wife in Bristol. In Bristol, he published his own periodical, The Watchman, which lasted two months. At the same time, he published the first of his poems, Poems on Various Subjects (1796). After an attack of neuralgia, Coleridge began to take opium. A profusion of his most venerable works came in 1797: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Lyrical Ballads, on which he collaborated with William Wordsworth, part one of Christabel, and Kubla Khan preceded the publication of the second edition of Poems. After spending ten months in Germany he visited Sockburn where he met up with Wordsworth. In 1799, he translated Schiller's Wallenstein and contributed his work to the Morning Post. By 1804, Coleridge suffered from failing health and increased addiction to opium. Wordsworth criticized his habit and the two quarreled in 1810. The years before his death were productive, yet not to the same level as his previous works.

Criticism

Coleridge's genius touched religion, politics, metaphysics, and literature. He possessed an overwhelming amount of potential that was, unfortunately, not resolved due to his problems with opium. Yet he mastered a form of conversational blank verse and lyrical poetry, succeeded, through his observation, in conveying the mystical and dark aspects of nature, and perfected his memory of the imaginative images that floated about in his mind. He influenced Shelley, Byron, and much of the later generation of Romantics.

Works
Christabel
Kubla Khan
The Pains of Sleep
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Lyrical Ballads
The Eolian Harp
Dejection: An Ode
The Lime-tree Bower my Prison

Sources:

Noyes, Russell. English Romantic Poetry and Prose. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956.