About the Author
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in 1772 in Devon, England as the youngest and fourteenth child of Reverend John Coleridge. A brilliant student and a philosopher, Coleridge wrote renowned literary criticism as well as poetry. He traveled extensively in his life, and he is known to have struggled with an opium addiction. By publishing the joint work Lyrical Ballads with William Wordsworth in 1798 (in which the Rime of the Ancient Mariner was the longest piece) he launched the Romantic Movement in England. Coleridge’s work was very well received by his contemporaries, and had a lasting impact on the Romantic Movement he started, on Gothic writers, and on American transcendentalism. Coleridge died in 1834 from heart failure and health complications likely linked to his drug use.
LitCharts guides for works by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Explore LitCharts literature and poetry guides for works by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Each literature guide includes a full summary, detailed analysis, and helpful resources. Each poetry guide offers line-by-line analysis and exploration of poetic devices.
"Constancy to an Ideal Object" is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's examination of the illusions and pains of impossible love. The poem's speaker, in love with a lady he can never be with, finds himself lo...
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"Dejection: An Ode" is English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge's exploration of despair, joy, and imagination. Lost in a terrible "dejection"—a kind of numb, colorless hopelessness—the poem's...
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"Frost at Midnight," originally published in 1798, is generally considered one of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's best conversation poems—a type of poem that Coleridge created in which a speaker mulls ov...
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"Kubla Khan" is considered to be one of the greatest poems by the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who said he wrote the strange and hallucinatory poem shortly after waking up from an...
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"The Eolian Harp" is a blank verse poem written by the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge began writing the poem in 1795 and continued revising it through 1828. An eolian harp...
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The English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote "The Pains of Sleep" in 1803. The poem's speaker, a version of Coleridge himself, describes a series of agonizing nightmares and wonders why ...
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The poem begins by introducing the Ancient Mariner, who, with his “glittering eye,” stops a Wedding Guest from attending a nearby wedding celebration. The Mariner stops the young man to tell him t...
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In "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge tells the true story of a day in 1797 when an unfortunate foot injury kept him from taking a countryside rambl...
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