The Portable Coleridge
Chronically impoverished, tormented by self-doubt and a crippling addiction to opium, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) still managed to become one of the most versatile and influential forces of English romanticism. The Portable Coleridge faithfully represents all facets of this complex, haunted genius, including his poems, " The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ," " Christabel ," " Kubla Khan ," and " Dejection "; letters to friends and colleagues such as Robert Southey and William Godwin; selections from Notebooks and Table Talk; political and philisophical writings; literary criticism; and extensive excerpts from Biographia Literaria , in which Coleridge interweaves aesthetics, metaphysics, and disarmingly candid autobiography. Edited and with an introduction by the critic I.A. Richards, this voulme vastly expands our understanding of a writer of visionary insight and protean range.