Samuel Taylor Coleridge Books

This collection has a number of outstanding essays. One of the most comprehensive is by I. A. Richards who dispels the myths Coleridge created about his own lack of industriousness, and slothful character. Richards also makes the claim that Coleridge helped provide Wordsworth his own idea of himself as poet, that Wordsworth is in a sense the creation of Coleridge. Richards does an excellent job showing the Coleridge of many parts,poet, literary critic, theologian, metaphysician, journalist, aesthetic theorist, autobiographer, lecturer, man- of - letters in the deepest sense. One of the most touching elements in all of this are the words of Coleridge's great friends about him. Coleridge, the dissolute drug- addict, and the failure in marriage, the incompetent in practical and everyday life matters is described by his friends Lamb and Wordsworth as the dearest friend they have had , and the best person they have known.
For a very great creator like Coleridge, I believe , knowing the lives of many other great creators, that this is very special praise indeed.

MOBY DICK (1949)
Produced and Directed By Andrew Allan
Composer Lucio Agostini Author Herman Melville Adaptor John Bethune
Produced and Directed By Andrew Allan
Ishmael- John Drainie, Captain Ahab- Lorne Greene, Mr. Starbuck- Budd Knapp,
A radio adaptation of Herman Melville's classic story of blind revenge, symbolism and bitterness. Consumed by insane rage Captain Ahab (Lorne Greene) is on a quest to Kill Moby-Dick, the Great White Whale that disfigured him. The intensity and anguish of this spectacular retelling of the epic tale come alive in this 1949 tour de force radio play.
WITH
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1949)
Produced and Directed By Andrew Allan Composer Lucio Agostini Author Samuel Taylor Coleridge Adaptor Ira Dilworth
A ship having first sailed to the equator was driven by storms to the "cold country" towards the South Pole. How the Ancient Mariner cruelly and in contempt of the laws of Hospitality killed a sea bird and how he came back to his own country

This review relates to the volume -The Works of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge-, published by The Wordsworth Poetry
Library, Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1994. 614 pp.
There is an "Introduction" by Martin Corner (Kingston
University) and an excellent "Preface" by Ernest
Hartley Coleridge, which not only tells the complete
selection of poems and how they were arrived at
(reprinted here by Wordsworth Editions) but also
includes the publishing history of the various
editions, and how the separately published items
were brought together. This reprinted edition must
be of an edition after 1893, as that is the last
edition mentioned by E.H. Coleridge in his Preface.
This reprint is a wonder for general readers, students,
and scholars (particulary the latter, for the notes,
publishing histories, and first-time inclusions of
items not found elsewhere before this edition are
invaluable).
The notes below major poems, little known items,
and previously not published pieces are extremely
valuable and interesting. The collection of poems
themselves are listed in chronological order under
each year starting with 1787 ("Easter Holidays" [MS.
Letter, May 13, 1787.], "Dura Navis" [B.M. Add. MSS.
34,225], "Nil Pejus est Caelib Vita" [Boyer's -Liber
Aureus.], for instance.
For this edition, E.H. Coleridge in the "Preface"
states: "I desire to express my thanks to my kinsman
Lord Coleridge for opportunity kindly afforded me of
collating the text of the fragments first published in
1893 with the original MSS. in his possession, and of
making further extracts; to Mr. Gordon Wordsworth for
permitting me to print a first draft of the poem addressed
to his ancestor on the 'Growth of an Individual Mind'; and
to Miss Arnold of Fox How for a copy of the first draft of
lines 'On Revisiting the Sea-shore.'
This is a COMPLETE edition or collection of all of
Coleridge's work. Although many people will be interested
in Coleridge as the author of "The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner," "Christabel," and "Kubla Khan," there are the
many lesser known (but no less interesting and insightful)
poems here -- as well as the the obvious influences of
Classical reading and learning on Coleridge.
There are the 9 "Sonnets on Eminent Charcters" (including
Mr. Erskine, Burke, Priestley, La Fayette, Koskiusko,
Pitt, Rev. W.L. Bowles, Mrs. Siddons, William Godwin,
Robert Southey of Baliol College, Oxford, Richard

Brinsley Sheridan, Esq., and Lord Stanhope; two versions
of "Monody on the Death of Chatterton"; "A Mathematical
Problem" (in verse!); "Pantisocracy;" "On the Prospect
of establishing a Pantisocracy in America;" "To the
Nightingale;" "The Eolian Harp;" and, under 1797,
"The Raven" (which predates Edgar Allan Poe's own
famous poem addressed to that subject).
The real treasures, however, are the host of lesser
known but provocative philosophical speculations,

allegorical compositions, and moody meditations.
Among these would be poems like "Psyche;" "A Tombless
Epitaph," "The Visionary Hope;" "Time, Real and
Imaginary: An Allegory;" "To Nature" (1820?); "Limbo;"
"Ne Plus Ultra;" "Sancti Dominici Pallium: A Dialogue
Between Poet and Friend;" "Constancy to an Ideal
Object;" "Epitaphium Testamentarium" and others.
There are sections devoted to "Fragments," "Metrical
Experiments," and the Appendices: (I) First Drafts,
Early Versions, Etc.; which includes versions of
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "The Raven";
and, most interesting, (II) "Allegoric Vision;"
and (III) "Apologetic Preface to 'Fire, Famine,
and Slaughter.'"
This is a fabulous collection of Coleridge and
could only be further recommended by a few of HIS
lines:
In many ways does the full heart reveal
The presence of the love it would conceal;
But in far more th' estranged heart lets know
The absence of the love, which yet it fain would show.
(1826).
-- Robert Kilgore.

This is a great version of this classic poem at a reasonable price. Very lovely illustrations and just the right amount of annotation of antiquated phrases. A great book for adults who have not read the story, or to get children interested in poetry.

Relic113

Dover puts out quite the book. This edition being in the $5 range is no exception. It's the size of a large coloring book with the writing on the left and the pictures on the right. Printed well and bound to last a great number of years with plenty of space to write commentary of your own if you are a student.

There is added text, printed very small, to the left of the actual poem. Some of it is interesting and some of it is superfluous. Very easy to ignore if you're not a 'footnote' reading person.

The plates run to the full edge of the paper and there is no white border if you are the 'cut it our of the book and hand it on my wall type'. No bashing here this book is cheap enough to buy one to read and one to be artistic with.

If you're familiar with the poem this illustrated volume is well worth having in your library. The drawings by Gustave Dore are beautiful and perfectly complememnt the text. A book that you can enjoy many times over whenever the mood strikes you.

"It's the structure of the reader's experience rather than any structures available on the page that should be the object of description" , says Stanley Fish in his essay. In parallel with Fish's this claim, Coleridge presents his poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", with marginal notes, each of which actually reifies the perspective of an "intended reader, the reader whose education, opinions, concerns make him capable of having the experience the author wished to provide". Coleridge gives a reading of his poem by creating an ideal reader, thus creating another kind of poet who "restructures" the poem. Therefore, the side notes should be thought to be an organic part of the poem "having meaning" rather than "leading to meaning". And this brings in a new understanding of the poem which is almost imposed on the actual reader by Coleridge's ideal one.
The marginal notes of the poem, at first sight, seem to be the short summaries of the stanzas. However, when they are read closely, the first thing that strikes the eye is that some of them include some details and deductions which are not suggested in the poem. These details and deductions go beyond the borders of a summary and turn into commentaries which express the perspective of a certain individual. And this perspective reflects the tendencies of a reader who is inclined to emphasize certain points of the poem by giving extra details and making deductions. Coleridge's ideal reader makes all the deductions that the poet wants to provide in his lines. Even at the very beginning of the poem he gets the supernatural tone of the lines that Coleridge wants to give. For instance, the fifth stanza of the first part suggests that:
"The wedding-guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but to hear;
Thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner." (Part I, V, 17-20)
And the marginal note gives the explanation of the stanza with these words: "The wedding guest is spell-bound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale" (61). The related stanzas of the poem don't include any word directly related to "be spelled". It is true that a reader might come to such a conclusion but there is a possibility that s/he might not. As Fish says, there are different "interpretive communities" that can lead to different interpretations of a literary work. Therefore, a reader can explain the behavior of the wedding-guest in psychological terms while a different reader, for example the owner of the commentaries, can explain it in supernatural elements. The commentator's insistence upon supernatural explanation of the poem almost forces the readers to think in supernatural terms while they may interpret the experiences of the mariner, for instance, as products of hallucination or neurosis. The possible reason of this effect is that the marginal notes give a much more convincing impression as they don't seem to be parts of the poem and this caused them to lose their fictional side in the reader's eye. The reader unconsciously sees the commentator as an authority. For example, when the mariner kills the albatross without any reason, the weather and other conditions get worse. The mariner, an old man who kills a harmless albatross without any sensible reason, definitely believes that the conditions get worse so as to punish him for his crime. However, this approach to the changing conditions becomes more convincing when the commentator points out that, "And the Albatross begins to be avenged" (67). Moreover, the mariner never tells it as directly as the commentator although it is apparent that he believes it to be so. Coleridge, by creating his own ideal reader and giving his commentaries as marginal notes, almost forces the readers of the poem to believe in the "supernatural" experiences of the mariner. And he manages it without using the actual lines of the poem.
In his article, Stanley Fish points out that, "In a sequence where a reader first structures the field he inhabits and then is asked to restructure it by changing an assignment of speaker or realigning attitudes and positions" . In parallel with Fish's suggestion, Coleridge's reader, the commentator, changes the actual lines of the poem by giving extra details just like the end notes of an author. For instance, in the second part of the poem, the following stanza describes the temporary good conditions just after the mariner kills the albatross:
"The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea." (Part II, V, 103-106)

And the marginal note of this stanza suggests that, "The fair breeze continues; the ship enters the Pacific Ocean, and sails northward, even till reaches the Line" (67). It is apparent that the related lines of the poem don't include any information about the exact location or direction of the sail. However, the ideal reader of the poem is capable of locating the ship exactly on the Pacific Ocean and of giving its exact direction to the north. The commentator, as Fish suggests, "restructures" the lines of Coleridge by "realigning" the suggested directions of the wind which provide only ambiguous information about the location. And through his own experience, he himself creates the exact location of the sail as "the reader's experience is itself the product of a set of interpretive assumptions". Another example that shows the commentator's restructuring the lines of the poem is related to bad omens after the mariner's killing of Albatross. The related stanza in the second part of the poem says:
"And some in dreams assured were
Of the spirit that plagued us so;
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow." (Part II, XII, 131-134)

And the commentary of the stanza gives a detailed information about the features and origins of the spirit: "One of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus...may be consulted. They are very numerous,...."(69). As it is apparently seen, the commentator makes the interpretation of the stanza by using his own experience and education. He presents his background, imagination and his own point of view to other readers; therefore he offers his own interpretation and understanding of the poem. He changes or "realigns" the apparent meaning of the poem by bringing in a new perspective just like a painter's use of light on his/her painting from different angles. Thus, the commentator, like a gleam of light, illuminates the poem from a certain angle and creates a new appearance of it.
While creating a specific perspective in the understanding of the poem, some of the commentaries have their own poetical tone although they just seem to be small summaries of the stanzas. The owner of the commentaries prefers to use a literary language with phrases in a melodious harmony with each other and with a perfect choice of words. For example, in the fifth part of the poem, the mariner describes the resurrection of the crew not with their own souls but spelled by the spirits. And he describes it with the following lines:
"...`T was not those souls that fled in pain,
Which to their corses came again,
But a troop of spirits blest." (Part V, XIII, 347-349)

When the commentary of these lines is read, almost a new poem with harmonious phrases and with a poetical tone comes out. When the commentary is turned into the lines of a poem, the poetic side of it becomes much more obvious:
"But not by the souls of the men,
Nor by demons of earth or middle air,
But by a blessed troop of angelic spirits,
Sent by the invocation of the guardian saint." (81)

As it is clearly seen, the commentary owns a structure easily convertible into a stanza. Moreover, the phrases have a perfect parallelism with each other and there is a regular repetition of "by" in each line. And this tone and poetical structure of the commentary convincingly shows that Coleridge's ideal reader manages more than just understanding the poem and making comments on it. He becomes an indispensable part of the poem by getting closer and closer to the poet and by adopting his creative tone. He internalizes the poetical world of the poem and starts to read it with the energy of a poet which eventually leads to a harmonious language and rhetorical structure. He starts to ask rhetorical questions which encourage other readers of the poem to think on the poem, to question it and to deduce some conclusions. When the mariner describes the ship approaching "without a breeze, without a tide" (Part III, VI, 169), the ideal reader of Coleridge asks, "Can it be a ship that comes onward without wind or tide?" (71) so as to make other readers realize the strangeness of the situation and conclude that there must be a spiritual intervention. Therefore, the commentator emerges as a guide who tries to shape the reader's opinions and deductions.
In "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", Coleridge creates his ideal reader in the small summaries of the poem in order to clarify the meaning he wants to provide by means of his ideal reader's experience, education and perspective. Coleridge, through his commentator, imposes the certain understanding of the poem on other readers who can have completely different interpretations and deductions. The commentator clarifies, interprets and "restructures" certain lines, asks questions and directs other readers in a way which his creator, Coleridge, wants them to follow. He almost forces the readers to look at the poem from one perspective and he manages it by using his position as an ideal reader and commentator endowed with authority by Coleridge himself. And throughout the poem, he ends up with being one of the poets of the poem by using his rights to interpret and "restructure" the actual lines of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

I was suprised when I received The Modern Critical Interpretations edition of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

There are no woodcuts or any other pictures, there are no silver pages, there is no poem at all!

This book is only modern critical interpretations - nothing more. Buy it if you are a scholar - and refer to a separate copy of the poem.

I should have known from the edition but the editorial reviews were from a different book that was an edition of the actual poem.

While the story of "the man from Porlock" disturbing the opium reverie which fueled Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" is one of the best known pieces of literary historico-mythology, Richard Holmes plugs significant gaps in his fine biography. He covers the man's small but radiant poetical opus marvelously and, as the title suggests, does not shy away from dealing with the dark side of the drug-addicted genius. Coleridge's de Quinceyesque appetite for opium was problematic to say the least: it seems that the brawl with Charles Lamb in a Gottingen bierkellar in 1805 may have had less to do with a disagreement over interpretation of German Romantic aesthetics (as Dr Nattarajan suggests in her biography) and more to do with Coleridge's stash going missing. Holmes provides an intriguing insight into the context of the composition of "Dejection: An Ode" - by 1802 Coleridge was pimping a stable of 15 prostitutes in order to feed his habit, and was heartbroken when close friend and fellow leading-light in English Romanticism, William Wordsworth, poached 2 of his top-earning girls. At times a certain naivete of approach is evident, such as when Holmes attributes the poet's 1811 armed robbery of an alehouse in Putney to "a work of epiphenomena, or particular emanations, of a singular mind of visionary genius and the development of a then completely new and 'organic' form of creativity" rather than seeing the act as the cold-turkey induced stick-up it most surely was. But otherwise, this is a work of solid scholarship and penetrating insight.

Here are some things you probably don't know about London's Royal Institution, whose 14 Doric columns dominate the north end of Albermale Street: virtually from its founding in 1799, its programs of lectures "achieved international status." The lecture hall "held up to 500 people in a hemisphere of steeply tiered seats, with a gallery above and a circle of gas lamps ... the attention of the audience was sustained by various creature comforts: green cushioned seating, green baize floor coverings, and the latest in central heating systems using copper pipes." Indeed "the popularity of the Institution's lectures so often jammed Albermale Street with carriages that it eventually became the first one-way thoroughfare in London."

Some will find that this rich texture of detail adds substance and conviction to Holmes' account of Coleridge's later years. Others will find it a bit over the top. It's a matter of taste, but if you like this sort of thing, then you will get your fill of it in this biography.

Holmes makes his choices as to detail, of course. He has less choice with the character of his subject. Coleridge seems to have made at least three capital contributions to the history of English literature. First, he crafted a number of weirdly unforgettable lyrics, notably "The Ancient Mariner," and "Christobel" and "Kubla Khan." Second, he introduced German idealistic philosophy (Kant, and particularly Schelling) to an untutored island race. And third, he produced a body of criticism, shrewd and insightful in itself, but also the first (in England, at least) ever based on an explicit intellectual framework. Maybe a fourth: he is the architect of a conservative critique of modernity that probably continues to deserve a place in the conservative intellectual tradition.

But, but, but, but - what a dreadful human being! Not dreadful in the sense of mean, spiteful, combatitive. No: dreadful in the sense of lachrymose, self-pitying and an epic-proportions sponge. It is that last that takes one's breath away. Blanche DuBois had the good grace to depend on the kindness of strangers. Coleridge cheerfully victimizes his nearest and dearest, and even makes friends out of those he is newly victimizing.

The amazing part is, of course, that they put up with it - his wife Sara (who refused to divorce him even when he asked her to); his poetical companion, William Wordsworth, and any of half a dozen less easily identified but no less important benefactors. Over and over, they report that they were dazzled by his presence, not least in his conversation. Indeed on the testimony of these friends, he must have been one of the world's all-time great conversationalists. And here Holmes has another problem not of his own making: conversation is the most ephemeral of arts (even more so than cooking). And while we have any number of testimonials to his conversational ability, we have little or no direct evidence of what he actually said.

Having archly complained about the excess of detail in this book, I suppose it may seem inconsistent of me to ask for more. Yet I will do so: Coleridge lived in turbulent times and he becomes involved, at least as a "commenting intellectual," in that turbulence. Holmes adverts to the social and political background. It might have helped had he applied his considerable powers of description and analysis to sketching out more thoroughly the political landscape in which he lived.

Samuel Johnson said of Milton's "Paradise Lost" that none have ever wished it longer. I guess I can see why this remark comes to mind while reading Holmes on Coleridge. I was happy to pick it up, and happy to read it. And happy to put it down.

Richard Holmes' marvellous book is the sequel to his Coleridge: Early Visions. For fifteen years, he has been constantly engaged with Coleridge's ideas, poems, plays and philosophical writings. He traces Coleridge's lifelong dialogues with the greatest of English poets, Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth, and also with the finest German writers, Goethe and Schiller.

Coleridge was that rare creature, a superb poet who could also grapple with the deepest of philosophers. He could brilliantly summarise the two basic possible lines in philosophy: "The difference between Aristotle and Plato is that which will remain as long as we are men and there is any difference between man and man in point of opinion. Plato, with Pythagoras before him, had conceived that the phenomenon or outside appearance, all that we call thing or matter, is but as it were a language by which the invisible (that which is not the object of our senses) communicates its existence to our finite beings ... Aristotle, on the contrary, affirmed that all our knowledge had begun in experience, had begun through the senses, and that from the senses only we could take our notions of reality ... It was the first way in which, plainly and distinctly, two opposite systems were placed before the mind of the world."

Although Coleridge adhered to Platonism, he honestly admitted, "All these poetico-philosophical Arguments strike and shatter themselves into froth against that stubborn rock, the fact of Consciousness, or rather its dependence on the body."

Like other notable literary biographies - one thinks of Holmes' earlier one of Shelley, Richard Ellman's of Oscar Wilde, Peter Ackroyd's of Charles Dickens, Tim Hilton's of John Ruskin, E. P. Thompson's of William Morris, and Leon Edel's of Henry James - this wonderful book arouses our enthusiasm for literature. It shows us again how a great writer's work can help us both to enjoy and to make sense of the world.

Let me just add my voice to the chorus of yea-sayers for both the first and second volumes of this wonderful biography. Holmes does a fantastic job fleshing out the human side of Coleridge's genius and of giving the low-down on his masochistic relationship with the inferior (and rather creepy) William and Dorothy Wordsworth. We find that Coleridge could have been a stellar performer in matters of British colonialism in Malta, had he only chosen to. We find that he was in love with Sarah Hutchinson (his beloved Asra) and that he had a fling with a beautiful opera singer, while penning poems to Asra all the while. And above all, we're given a key to Coleridge's bouts of dejection and depression: his near-constant humiliation because of his inability to move his bowels, brought on by his opium habit. Many of these items I'd heard of, or divined from the standard texts I'd read before--but that last item was a real revelation to me! This book is packed full of such revelations! Coleridge steps forth from the pages in all his grubbiness and all his glory! We must finally scratch our heads and admire such a rare creature that once roamed the fields of the lake district and the streets of London and environs. Read it!

Few people know that Coleridge followed the great achievement of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" with a cookbook describing his experiences and adventures in backyard barbecuing that was equally brilliant, entitled "The Rind of the Ancient Marinator." Coleridge also includes his famous recipes on Yorkshire pudding, haggis, and steak and kidney pie. Today unfortunately out of print, it's worth finding by all backyard barbecue enthusiasts who want the inside scoop on the lost art of British barbecue.

This collection of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's work is a fantastic snapshot of the great romantic poet. Included in it are his two great poems, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan." Additionally, my two favorites, "Lewti" and "Love" are in the collection. Coleridge builds amazing worlds from his education and his opium habit that still astound the reader. Anyone who is looking to read some Coleridge should pick this one up.

A good cheap trippy collection from Dover, is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Other Poems, and that is how we
like our poetry, cheap. This includes quite a few, and has Kubla Khan,
if it didn't, I certainly would not have purchased it. So if you are
after the title track and that so to speak, this one will do you.

'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' is a haunting and strange poem. The great memorable lines of the opening , ' It is an ancient mariner / and he stoppeth one of three/ by the long grey beard and thy glittering eye / wherefore thou stoppest thou me?/ lead us to a kind of enchanted and impossible world. The tale itself of the slaying of the albatross of the cosmic coordination in response to the evil of Man has a certain Biblical flavor which connects the story with Jonah . The work as a whole I have always found perplexing in its ultimate meaning, but strong in its great poetic lines. (Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink)
In another great poem in this collection ' In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree ' Coleridge 's great musical power and mystical sense is again felt .This scattered man of ideas this long- suffering lonely genius the incredible master of the mind's digression, this supreme talker and goer- on- and -on did in his youth also write great poetry .
There is much much beauty here amid the musings and meanderings of this great wandering and wondering mind.

This is BORING. You have to practically stagger through it, and the poetry makes it even harder. The albatross was a curse, or whatever, but I wouldn't recommend this.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge produced nearly all of his best poetry in a two year period, 1797-1798, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan. After writing Ode to Dejection (1802), his farewell to the Muse of Poetry, he wrote few poems and concentrated almost exclusively on literary criticism and political, philosophical, and theological essays.

This short, inexpensive Dover publication offers a broad sampling of the poetry of Coleridge - imaginative poems, lyrical ballads, witty poems, and more serious poetry on literary topics and political events. I expected more fantastical poems like Kubla Khan and I was unprepared for his serious, contemplative, and somewhat difficult poetry. Coleridge was more like Keats and Wordsworth than I had realized.

I was surprised by Coleridge in another way. He confronted political and social issues that are just as relevant and controversial today. Fears in Solitude, written in 1798 during the alarm of a possible invasion by France, criticizes the public's naïve willingness to undertake military conflict, while arguing that Coleridge's criticism was neither unpatriotic nor mistimed. "I have told most bitter truth, but without bitterness."

Similarly, in France: An Ode he tells of his unbridled enthusiasm for the revolution in France, followed by his bitter disappointment as the cause of liberty was betrayed by a revolution gone awry. In his short poem The Dungeon Coleridge challenges the practice of incarcerating prisoners in dark, dismal dungeons. He questions whether more humane treatment might be more curative.

His short, witty poem Cologne should earn him honorary membership in the Sierra Club. In observing how the Rhine River washes away the sewage of Cologne, he asks a question not fully answered today: But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine shall henceforth wash the River Rhine?

After reading his better known poetry, I suggest that you skip around to other poems of interest. But do come back to the more challenging poems. They will likely require multiple readings, but the effort will be rewarded.

This collection of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's work is a fantastic snapshot of the great romantic poet. Included in it are his two great poems, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan." Additionally, my two favorites, "Lewti" and "Love" are in the collection. Coleridge builds amazing worlds from his education and his opium habit that still astound the reader. Anyone who is looking to read some Coleridge should pick this one up.

A good cheap trippy collection from Dover, is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Other Poems, and that is how we
like our poetry, cheap. This includes quite a few, and has Kubla Khan,
if it didn't, I certainly would not have purchased it. So if you are
after the title track and that so to speak, this one will do you.

'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' is a haunting and strange poem. The great memorable lines of the opening , ' It is an ancient mariner / and he stoppeth one of three/ by the long grey beard and thy glittering eye / wherefore thou stoppest thou me?/ lead us to a kind of enchanted and impossible world. The tale itself of the slaying of the albatross of the cosmic coordination in response to the evil of Man has a certain Biblical flavor which connects the story with Jonah . The work as a whole I have always found perplexing in its ultimate meaning, but strong in its great poetic lines. (Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink)
In another great poem in this collection ' In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree ' Coleridge 's great musical power and mystical sense is again felt .This scattered man of ideas this long- suffering lonely genius the incredible master of the mind's digression, this supreme talker and goer- on- and -on did in his youth also write great poetry .
There is much much beauty here amid the musings and meanderings of this great wandering and wondering mind.

This is BORING. You have to practically stagger through it, and the poetry makes it even harder. The albatross was a curse, or whatever, but I wouldn't recommend this.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge produced nearly all of his best poetry in a two year period, 1797-1798, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan. After writing Ode to Dejection (1802), his farewell to the Muse of Poetry, he wrote few poems and concentrated almost exclusively on literary criticism and political, philosophical, and theological essays.

This short, inexpensive Dover publication offers a broad sampling of the poetry of Coleridge - imaginative poems, lyrical ballads, witty poems, and more serious poetry on literary topics and political events. I expected more fantastical poems like Kubla Khan and I was unprepared for his serious, contemplative, and somewhat difficult poetry. Coleridge was more like Keats and Wordsworth than I had realized.

I was surprised by Coleridge in another way. He confronted political and social issues that are just as relevant and controversial today. Fears in Solitude, written in 1798 during the alarm of a possible invasion by France, criticizes the public's naïve willingness to undertake military conflict, while arguing that Coleridge's criticism was neither unpatriotic nor mistimed. "I have told most bitter truth, but without bitterness."

Similarly, in France: An Ode he tells of his unbridled enthusiasm for the revolution in France, followed by his bitter disappointment as the cause of liberty was betrayed by a revolution gone awry. In his short poem The Dungeon Coleridge challenges the practice of incarcerating prisoners in dark, dismal dungeons. He questions whether more humane treatment might be more curative.

His short, witty poem Cologne should earn him honorary membership in the Sierra Club. In observing how the Rhine River washes away the sewage of Cologne, he asks a question not fully answered today: But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine shall henceforth wash the River Rhine?

After reading his better known poetry, I suggest that you skip around to other poems of interest. But do come back to the more challenging poems. They will likely require multiple readings, but the effort will be rewarded.

I just received this book earlier today and all I can say is wow! A complete and total genius! This is a must have for your library of poetry. As soon as you get it I would recommend you to fully reading the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

This just blew me away;

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

Genius with words and master of painting pictures with them to really make you think and envision what he is trying to show you! The list goes and the poems are just amazing! You need to buy this book!

So far a good book. I haven't been able to put it down.

I bought this collection of Coleridge's poems sight unseen on the assumption--which proved correct--that it would have scholarly apparatus similar to that of the other more recent Penguin editions of major poets. There is nothing else that comes close to it except for the hugely expensive Princeton edition. Everything most readers need to know about these poems is in the scrupulous notes of the editor, William Keach. I'd throw my old Modern Library selection into the garage sale heap, except that it has "Biographia Literaria" complete, though with no notes or other aids.

This Penguin collection compares very well with my own Oxford Edition of 1935, and I particularly like the fact that the price is reasonable, so more people may decide to buy the book instead of just getting the two or three poems available in a typical anthology. Samuel Taylor Coleridge suffered a lot during his life: unrequited love, drug addiction, inferiority complex. Yet what a wonderful legacy for all of us fortunate enough to read his verses. My favorite poem is Christabel and I can't help picture the entire poem in my mind as if it were a gothic-horror film. The Ryme of the Ancient Mariner is his most famous work, but all of his other great and not-so great works are here, too: Dejection, an Ode; To Mathilda Betham from a Stranger; Kubla Khan; Ode to the Departing Year; The Nightingale; A Stranger Minstrel, etc. Coleridge represents the departure from the Neo-Classic and the introduction to the Romantic. He and his friend Wordsworth are pivotal in achieving that change. His religious poems may seem odd to a modern reader, but mysticism was nothing new back then, and the man was trying to make sense of his very difficult life, anchoring his hopes in his religion. Anyone who purchases, or borrows, this book, must know that hundreds of pages worth of poetry tell us a lot about the poet, since we are reading his life's work. Excellent book dedicated to the labor of a great author, and at a very convenient price. If you like the Romantics, or are interested in the period, this is a book for you.

Coleridge's greatness as a poet is in part his capacity to create lines which ring in and return to the mind over and over again. He is one of those poets whose poetry loves to be remembered.

"It is an Ancient Mariner and he stoppeth one of three /By thy long grey beard and glittering eye/ Wherefore thou stoppest thou me?"

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure Dome decree/Where Alph the Sacred River ran/ through caverns measureless to Man/ Down to a sunless sea/

"He prayeth best who loveth both/ All things both great and Small /For the Great God who madeth us / He loveth and madeth us all. /

Coleridge wrote some of the greatest poems written in the English language . "The Ancient Mariner" "Kubla Khan" "Dejection:An Ode" "

With Wordsworth he in "The Lyrical Ballads 1798" initiated the Romantic Movement in English poetry, with Wordsworth concentrating on the everyday in simple language, and Coleridge the mysterious and supernal in fantastic language.
This complete collection of his poetry is as uneven and varied in interest as his own remarkable if unsteady mind was.
The complete collection gives the reader the chance to reread and repossess the great works often anthologized, and explore further less well - known poems which nonetheless have their own value.

I am almost as much in awe of the erudition of the editors (James Engell and W Jackson Bates of the Bolingen edition) as that of Coleridge himself. I think it is often easier to parade one's own wide reading than to recognize someone elses's references. These editors track down the most obscure of Greek, German and Latin quotations and it's an education to read their notes.
There are really three themes in the book. One part is philosophy, one is literary criticism, and one is straight autobiography. These are dispersed throughout.
As regards the philosophy I am probably what he would have called "ignorant of his understanding." Coleridge shows a remarkable knowledge of German philosophy, read in the original language. As far as I know his philosophical ideas have not been highly regarded by pure philosophers.
The literary criticism is the most powerful and original part although the texts he uses will be unfamiliar and even anaccessible to most modern readers.
The fragments of autobiography such as chapter 10 and the first of the Satyrayane's Letters are the most readable.
While this is an unboubted work of genius I have denied it the fifth star because of a certain lack of redability. It is not, for the modern reader, a page-turning work of entertainment. It contains many gems, and much wit, but is one of those we take up today for instruction rather than diversion.

Anyone interested in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's work could not receive better advice than to buy the Princeton University Press paperback edition of Biographia Literaria (1817), the closest thing that this most brilliant but also most erratic of all the English romantic poets produced by way of a summa of his life and critical theories. If you've tried it in a cheap edition (e.g., the Modern Library) and set it aside scratching your head over the constant flow of obscure allusions, untranslated quotations in Latin, Greek, and, especially, German, and hundreds of references to other writers, now is the time to give it another shot. The editors, James Engell and Walter Jackson Bate, have meticulously glossed every one of these obscurities in footnotes (not endnotes)that are a model of clarity and concision. The volume has everything you need to appreciate this great work: a thorough and highly readable editors' introduction, a chronology of Coleridge's life, appendices on related correspondence and on passages Coleridge appropriated from the German philosophers, and a complete index. This edition is not, by ordinary standards, new: as volume 7 of Princeton's Collected Works of STC, it's been around as a two-volume hardcover since 1983 and a single volume paperback since 1984. But considering how long it took to produce a usable version for the ordinary reader, it might as well have come out yesterday.

Bede Griffiths, in his book The Golden String, referred to STC as "one of the most universal minds in English literature."

I don't know of anything comparable to Biographia Literaria. At times it's the narrative of a great poet's life. He may veer off into literary criticism or even parody (see the, to me, hilarious section in which he gives "The House that Jack Built" in the rhetorical manner of a recent poet). He powerfully attacks the positivism of his age (and ours). He evokes the wonder of being human.

This scholarly edition is the one to get, if you're going to put in the time to read this rich classic at all.

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. I absolutely love the old style of poetry. I highly recommend this book to poetry lovers.

I cannot think of a better way to introduce the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge than this small volume. The selection is excellent and of interest you the young reader. The commentary is quite relevant as are the pictures which accompany it. I find that often now, our young people go all the way through the early grades in school and many of them have never heard of Coleridge,much less read his poetry. This was the sort of stuff my generation and the generation before it grew up on and cut our teeth on. I truely feel I would be much less richer had I not read it and had it read to me. I do not feel I am any worse for the wear. I am fearful that we are bringing up an entire generation (rightfully or wrong, although I feel it is the later) of young folks who will have no appreciation to this great art form and will miss a lot. This book helps. This entire series helps, as a matter of fact and I certainly recommend you add this one and the others to your library. Actually, it is rather fun reading these with the young folk and then talking about them. Not only do you get to enjoy the work your self and perhaps bring back some great memories, but you have the opportunity to interact with your child or student. It is actually rather surprising what some of the kids come up with. I read these to my grandchildren and to the kids in my classes at school. For the most part, when I really get to discussing the work with them, they enjoy it. Recommend this one highly.

The Romantics redefined english literature, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge was one of the leaders. Between he and William Wordsworth, they WERE the movement. His vision, and glorified writing style still tantalize me to this day.