Coleridge

Winner of the 1989 Whitbread Prize for Book of the Year, this is the first volume of Holmes's seminal two-part examination of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of Britain's greatest poets.

Coleridge: Early Visions is the first part of Holmes's classic biography of Coleridge that forever transformed our view of the poet of 'Kubla Khan' and his place in the Romantic Movement. Dismissed by much recent scholarship as an opium addict, plagiarist, political apostate and mystic charlatan, Richard Holmes's Coleridge leaps out of the page as a brilliant, animated and endlessly provoking figure who invades the imagination. This is an act of biographical recreation which brings back to life Coleridge's poetry and encyclopaedic thought, his creative energy and physical presence. He is vivid and unexpected. Holmes draws the reader into the labyrinthine complications of his subject's personality and literary power, and faces us with profound questions about the nature of creativity, the relations between sexuality and friendship, the shifting grounds of political and religious belief.

Illustrations ix
Maps xi
Preface xiii
 
1 Child of Nature 1
2 Orphan of the Storm 21
3 Prodigal Son 39
4 Pantisocrat 59
5 Watchman 89
6 Prodigal Father 117
7 Kubla Coleridge 135
8 Mariner 169
9 Der Wanderer 205
10 Journeyman 238
11 Laker 273
12 Lover 297
13 Metaphysical Mountaineer 321
14 Exile 342
 
Postscript 362
Coleridge Circle 365
Bibliography and References 372
Acknowledgements 389
Index 391