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Poems

Poems

Summary

Coleridge is the most complex and brilliant, yet the most elusive and intense of the great Romantic writers. This selection of verse and prose displays the extraordinary scope of his mind, the power of his imagination and the virtuosity of his literary gifts. It also reveals that behind the glittering surface of familiar masterpieces – The Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, the Biographia – there is a great but unknown poet still waiting to be discovered.

Coleridge is regarded as a ground-breaking and, at his best, a powerful poet of lasting influence.

Reviews

  • ...One of the most arresting and celebrated English poems ever written: Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
    The Guardian

About the author

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was an English poet, philosopher and literary critic. Born in Ottery St Mary, Coleridge was educated at Christ's Hospital School, London where he began his friendship with Charles Lamb and began writing his first sonnets. With his friend William Wordsworth, Coleridge founded the Romantic Movement and became a member of the Lake Poets. In 1798 they co-wrote Lyrical Ballads, a landmark collection of poems that marked the beginning of Romanticism in English literature. The collection includes his greatest poem 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'.
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