Abstract
This chapter examines Sara Coleridge’s earlier literary activities, and considers the developing trajectory of her authorship. Schofield seeks to answer key questions: how decisive for her future undertakings is her experience as a translator? How significant is the family context of her authorship in this earlier phase? To what extent do her poems of this period revise her literary fathers’ perspectives? Given that Sara Coleridge finds her ultimate vocation in religious writing, why does she not compose religious poetry? John Keble’s influence upon Sara’s poetics is explored in relation to this topic. Her fairy-tale novel Phantasmion is discussed in the public context of an anti-Benthamite agenda. Finally, the beginnings of Sara Coleridge’s religious authorship are examined in relation to her work as STC’s editor.
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Notes
- 1.
Lesa Scholl , Translation, Authorship and The Victorian Professional Woman: Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Matrineau, and George Eliot (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), p. 3.
- 2.
Susan Bassnett , Translation Studies, 4th edn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), p. 7.
- 3.
Minnow Among Tritons: Mrs. S. T. Coleridge’s Letters to Thomas Poole 1799–1834, ed. by Stephen Potter (Bloomsbury: Nonesuch Press, 1934), p. 89. Mrs . S. T. Coleridge’s emphasis.
- 4.
William St. Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 195.
- 5.
Robert Southey, ‘An Account of the Abipones’, Quarterly Review 26 (1822), 277–323 (p. 279). Published anonymously.
- 6.
W. A. Speck , Robert Southey: Entire Man of Letters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 195.
- 7.
The Poems of Robert Southey, ed. by Maurice H. Fitzgerald (London: Oxford University Press, 1909).
- 8.
I am indebted to Dr Nicola Healey for having pointed out to me Sara’s allusion to Wordsworth’s ‘To HC, Six Years Old’.
- 9.
For detailed discussion of darker aspects of Sara’s life and writings, see the biographical works of Mudge, Jones and Waldegrave , and Lefebure’s Private Lives of the Ancient Mariner.
- 10.
WPTV, p. 277, l. 205. Poems, p. 74, l. 15.
- 11.
William Wordsworth, ‘Lyrical Ballads’, and Other Poems, 1797–1800, ed. by James Butler and Karen Green, The Cornell Wordsworth (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 117, l. 31.
- 12.
Dorothy Wordsworth, Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. by E. de Selincourt, 2 vols (London: Macmillan, 1941), I, pp. 11–12.
- 13.
Hartley Coleridge, Poems (Leeds: F. E. Bingley, 1833), p. 145 n. Hartley’s emphasis.
- 14.
Anne K. Mellor , Romanticism and Gender (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 3.
- 15.
John Keble , Lectures on Poetry, 1832–1841, trans. Edward Kershaw Francis, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), I, p. 13, p. 12, p. 22. Keble’s Lectures were first published in two volumes in 1844 in Latin. By delivering and publishing his lectures in Latin, Keble sought to uphold and honour academic tradition, and to counter ‘the fashion in criticism’ for ‘extravagance’ and sensationalism. Latin, for Keble, was the fitting medium to promote literary values of restraint and simplicity, and an aesthetic ‘of repose, of clearness’ (Lectures, I, pp. 16–17).
- 16.
Samuel Johnson, ‘Waller’, The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets; with Critical Observations on their Works, ed. by Roger Lonsdale, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), II, pp. 27–59 (p. 53).
- 17.
John Keble, ‘Sacred Poetry’, in Occasional Papers and Reviews, ed. by E. B. Pusey (London: Parker, 1877), pp. 81–107 (p. 81). Keble’s essay was first published in the Quarterly Review, 32 (1825), 211–232.
- 18.
William McKelvy, ‘Ways of Reading 1825: Leisure, Curiosity and Morbid Eagerness’, in John Keble in Context, ed. by Kirstie Blair (London: Anthem Press, 2004), pp. 75–88 (p. 86).
- 19.
John Keble, The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays Throughout the Year (London: Milford, Oxford University Press, and Longmans, Green and Co, 1827), p. iii.
- 20.
Kirstie Blair , Form and Faith in Victorian Poetry and Religion (Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 131, p. 52.
- 21.
John Keble, ‘Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott by J. G. Lockhart’, British Critic, 24 (1838), 423–484 (p. 467).
- 22.
Julie Melnyk , ‘Evangelical Theology and Feminist Polemic: Emma Jane Worboise’s Overdale’, in Women’s Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Transfiguring the Faith of Their Fathers, ed. by Julie Melnyk (New York: Garland, 1998), pp. 107–122 (p. 107, p. 109).
- 23.
Percy Shelley, ‘A Defence of Poetry’, in Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, ed. by Donald H. Raiman and Neil Freistat, 2nd edn (London: Norton, 2002), pp. 510–535 (p. 512).
- 24.
Henry Nelson Coleridge, ‘Modern English Poetesses’, Quarterly Review, 66 (1840), 374–418 (p. 411). Published anonymously.
- 25.
John Stuart Mill, ‘Bentham’, in Mill on Bentham and Coleridge, ed. F. R. Leavis (London: Chatto & Windus, 1950), pp. 39–98 (p. 63). Mill’s emphases.
- 26.
Dennis Low argues that STC is the direct influence on Sara’s novel, and that ‘in writing Phantasmion, [Sara] was attempting [to produce] her father’s unwritten “phantasmagoric allegory”’. See Low , pp. 136–137.
- 27.
Shelley, Poetical Works, ed. by Thomas Hutchinson, 2nd edn, rev. by G. M. Matthews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 371, l. 8.
- 28.
Lord Byron, ‘Frame Work Bill Speech’ (1812), in Lord Byron, The Complete Miscellaneous Prose, ed. by Andrew Nicholson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 22–27 (p. 23).
- 29.
Ian Ker, John Henry Newman (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 210, p. 211.
- 30.
N. Merrill Distad, Guessing at Truth: The Life of Charles Julius Hare (1795–1855) (Shepherdstown: The Patmos Press, 1979), p. 155.
- 31.
S. T. Coleridge, ‘Essay on Faith’, in The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. by Henry Nelson Coleridge, 4 vols (London: Pickering, 1836–1839), IV (1839), pp. 425–438 (pp. 437–438).
- 32.
S. T. Coleridge, Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. by Henry Nelson Coleridge, 2nd edn (London: Murray, 1836), p. 178, pp. 178–179 n.
- 33.
John Henry Newman, Tracts for the Times, ed. by James Tolhurst (Leominster: Gracewing, 2013), p. 240. Newman’s emphasis.
- 34.
John Henry Newman, The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. by Charles Dessain et al., 32 vols (London: Nelson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961–2008), V, Liberalism in Oxford: January 1835–December 1836, ed. by T. Gornall (1981), p. 255. Newman’s emphasis.
References
Bibliography of Works by Sara Coleridge
This section includes original writings by Sara Coleridge contained in editions of S. T. Coleridge. Her major extended contributions are cited individually.
Coleridge, Sara (anonymous translator). 1822. An Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian People from Paraguay, from the Latin of Martin Dobrizhoffer, 3 vols, London: Murray.
———. 1825. The Right Joyous and Pleasant History of the Feats, Gests, Prowesses of the Chevalier Bayard, the Good Knight Without Fear and Without Reproach. By the Loyal Servant, 2 vols, London: Murray.
———. 1834. Pretty Lessons in Verse for Good Children; with some Lessons in Latin in Easy Rhyme. London: Parker.
———. 1837. Phantasmion. London: Pickering.
———. 1843. On Rationalism. In S. T. Coleridge, Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character, ed. by H. N. Coleridge, 5th ed., 2 vols, II, 335–556. London: Pickering.
———. 1847. Introduction. In Biographia Literaria, or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, second edition prepared for publication in part by the late Henry Nelson Coleridge, completed and published by his widow, 2 vols, I, pp. v–clxxxvii. London: Pickering.
———. 1989. The Autobiography of Sara Coleridge. In Sara Coleridge: A Victorian Daughter: Her Life and Essays, ed. Bradford Keyes Mudge, 249–266. New Haven: Yale University Press.
———. 2007. Collected Poems, ed. Peter Swaab. Manchester: Caracent.
———. 2012. The Regions of Sara Coleridge’s Thought: Selected Literary Criticism, ed. Peter Swaab. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
General Bibliography
Bassnett, Susan. 2014. Translation Studies. 4th edn. Abingdon: Routledge.
Bate, Jonathan, and Eric Rasmussen, eds. 2007. William Shakespeare, Complete Works. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Blair, Kirstie. 2012. Form and Faith in Victorian Poetry and Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lord Byron. 1991. Frame Work Bill Speech. In The Complete Miscellaneous Prose, ed. Andrew Nicholson, 22–27. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Coleridge, Hartley. 1833. Poems. Leeds: F. E. Bingley.
———. 1908. The Complete Poetical Works of Hartley Coleridge, ed. Ramsey Colles. London: Routledge.
Coleridge, Henry Nelson, ed. 1836. Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2nd ed., 2 vols, London: Murray.
———. 1836–39. The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 4 vols, London: Pickering.
———. 1840. Modern English Poetesses. The Quarterly Review, 66: 374–418 (published anonymously).
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1839. Essay on Faith. In The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Henry Nelson Coleridge, 4 vols, IV, 425–438. London: Pickering, 1836–39.
———. 1976. On The Constitution of Church and State, ed. John Colmer, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 16 vols, X. London: Routledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969–2002.
———. 1991. Table Talk, ed. Carl Woodring, 2 vols, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 16 vols, XIV. London: Routledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969–2002.
———. 1993. Aids to Reflection, ed. John Beer, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 16 vols, IX. London: Routledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969–2002.
———. 2001. Poetical Works, ed. J.C.C. Mays, 3 vols, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 16 vols, XVI. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969–2002.
Curry, Kenneth. 1975. Southey. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Distad, N. Merrill. 1979. Guessing at Truth: The Life of Charles Julius Hare (1795–1855). Shepherdstown: The Patmos Press.
Evans, Eric J. 1994. The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain, 1783–1870. London: Longman.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2013. Truth and Method. 2nd edn. London: Bloomsbury.
Griggs, E.L. 1940. Coleridge Fille: A Biography of Sara Coleridge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Healey, Nicola. 2012. Dorothy Wordsworth and Hartley Coleridge: The Poetics of Relationship. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Johnson, Samuel. 1994. Waller. In The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets; with Critical Observations on Their Works, ed. Roger Lonsdale, 4 vols, II, 27–59. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
———. 2006. Cowley. In The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets; with Critical Observations on Their Works, ed. Roger Lonsdale, 4 vols, I, 191–234. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Jones, Kathleen. 1998. A Passionate Sisterhood: The Sisters, Wives and Daughters of the Lake Poets. London: Virago Press.
Keble, John. 1827. The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays Throughout the Year. London: Oxford University Press/Longmans, Green and Co.
———. 1838. Memoir of the Life of Sir Walter Scott by J. G. Lockhart. British Critic, 24.
———. 1846. Lyra Innocentium: Thoughts in Verse on Christian Children, Their Ways and Their Privileges. London: Parker.
———. 1877. Sacred Poetry. In Occasional Papers and Reviews, ed. E.B. Pusey, 81–107. London: Parker.
———. 1912. Lectures on Poetry, 1832–1841. Trans. Edward Kershaw Francis, 2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Ker, Ian. 2010. John Henry Newman. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Low, Dennis. 2006. The Literary Protégées of the Lake Poets. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Macovski, Michael. 1994. Dialogue and Literature: Apostrophe, Auditors and the Collapse of Romantic Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McKelvy, William. 2004. Ways of Reading 1825: Leisure, Curiosity and Morbid Eagerness. In John Keble in Context, ed. Kirstie Blair, 75–78. London: Anthem Press.
Mellor, Anne K. 1993. Romanticism and Gender. London: Routledge.
Melnyk, Julie. 1998. Evangelical Theology and Feminist Polemic: Emma Jane Worboise’s Overdale. In Women’s Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Transfiguring the Faith of Their Fathers, ed. Julie Melnyk, 107–122. New York: Garland.
Mill, John Stuart. 1950a. Bentham. In Mill on Bentham and Coleridge, ed. F.R. Leavis, 39–98. London: Chatto and Windus.
———. 1950b. Coleridge. In Mill on Bentham and Coleridge, ed. F.R. Leavis, 99–168. London: Chatto and Windus.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes. 1989. Sara Coleridge: A Victorian Daughter. Her Life and Essays. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Newman, John Henry. 1981. The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Charles Dessain et al., 32 vols (London: Nelson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961–2008), V: Liberalism in Oxford: January 1835–December 1836, ed. T. Gornall.
———. 2013. Tract 73, On the Introduction of Rationalistic Principles into Religion. In Tracts for the Times, ed. James Tolhurst, 180–243. Leominster: Gracewing.
Potter, Stephen, ed. 1934. Minnow Among Tritons: Mrs. S. T. Coleridge’s Letters to Thomas Poole. Bloomsbury: Nonesuch Press.
St. Clair, William. 2007. The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scholl, Lesa. 2011. Translation, Authorship and the Victorian Professional Woman: Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Martineau and George Eliot. Farnham: Ashgate.
Shelley, Percy. 1970. Shelley: Poetical Works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson, rev. G. M. Matthews, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2002. A Defence of Poetry. In Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Donald Reiman and Neil Fraistat, 2nd ed., 510–535. London: Norton.
Southey, Robert. 1822. An Account of the Abipones. Quarterly Review 26: 277–323 (published anonymously)
———. 1825. Memoirs of Bayard. Quarterly Review 32: 355–397 (published anonymously).
———. 1909. The Poems of Robert Southey, ed. Maurice H. Fitzgerald. London: Oxford University Press.
Speck, W.A. 2006. Robert Southey: Entire Man of Letters. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Stillinger, Jack. 1991. Multiple Authorship and the Myth of Solitary Genius. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Waldegrave, Katie. 2013. The Poets’ Daughters: Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge. London: Hutchinson.
Wordsworth, Dorothy. 1941. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. Ernest De Selincourt, 2 vols. London: Macmillan.
Wordsworth, William. 1983. ‘Poems in Two Volumes’, and Other Poems, 1800–1807, The Cornell Wordsworth, ed. Jared Curtis. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
———. 1992. ‘Lyrical Ballad’ and Other Poems, 1800–1807, The Cornell Wordsworth, ed. James Butler and Karen Green. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
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Schofield, R. (2018). Towards a Vocation of Religious Authorship: Collaboration and Dialogue, 1818–1837. In: The Vocation of Sara Coleridge. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70371-8_2
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