Coleridge: a Biographical Sketch

Abstract

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in Ottery St Mary, a market-town of some 2500 souls situated on the banks of the little river Otter in south-east Devon. Christened Samuel Taylor in honour of his godfather, he was the youngest of nine sons and one daughter born to John Coleridge and his second wife, Ann (née Bowden). John Coleridge, well advanced into middle age when his last son was born, had been since 1760 the vicar of the parish and master of the local grammar-school; he was, as Coleridge fondly remembered, a good albeit slightly eccentric man, an Israelite without guile — ‘in learning, good-heartedness, absentness of mind, & excessive ignorance of the world, he was a perfect Parson Adams’ (CL, I 310). Of Coleridge’s mother little is known, and Coleridge himself has left scant impression of her, except to say that she was an admirable household economist and was concerned for her family’s social well-being.²

The major biographies are the following: (a) James Dykes Campbell, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Narrative of the Events of his Life (London and New York, 1894; repr. Highgate, 1970); (b) E. K. Chambers, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Biographical Study (Oxford, 1938; repr. 1967); (c) Lawrence Hanson, The Life of S. T. Coleridge: The Early Years (London and Oxford, 1938; repr. New York, 1962); and (d) Walter Jackson Bate, Coleridge (Masters of World Literature Series) (New York, 1968; London, 1969; repr. 1973).