Coleridge: Early Visions

Mention Coleridge and you might get the response, "Did he write the Ancient Mariner?," or, "Wasn't he an opium addict?" Samuel Taylor Coleridge did write The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and he was an opium addict. But, as Richard Holmes makes abundantly clear, there was much more to the man. He was an extraordinary man, perhaps the most visionary of the English romantic poets. If that were not enough to warrant attention, he was also a political activist, a journalist and translator, a Unitarian preacher, lecturer, philosopher and energetic walker. My own interest in Coleridge was rekindled when I discovered he was among the founders of Pantisocracy, the movement that brought the Unitarian rationalist and scientist Dr. Joseph Priestley to my home area. This volume, which takes Coleridge up to the age of 31, covers in depth these aspects of his career as well as giving analyses of some of his better known poetry. Holmes does not gloss over the man's failings. He discusses his addiction, the charges of plagiarism, mystic humbug and less than admirable treatment of his wife. Anyone interested in the man and the period will find this book worth the read.

In the first of his two volume biography of Coleridge, Richard Holmes presents an unforgettable portrait of his subject. Coleridge was a notorious talker who could converse on just about anything and, like the Ancient Mariner he created, there was something hypnotic about his monologues (one gets the impression that Coleridge often spoke but rarely engaged in actual conversation). Holmes uses Coleridge's words to shape a stunning portrait. Best of all Holmes captures Coleridge in all his various roles: husband, father, son, lecturer, political activist, student, poet, walker, metaphysician, friend, lover etc. Holmes shows the best and worst of Coleridge in this first volume. Best of all, he has done the research to dispel a number of myths about Coleridge (some of which Coleridge himself started). The one real problem is Holmes seems to give every side of Coleridge the same amount of attention. Simply put, some parts of Coleridge's life were more important and therefore usually of more interest than other parts of it. Despite this minor flaw, Holmes offers a model biography and leaves a vivid impression of his subject.

This is the Coleridge I thought I knew through his poetry. Holmes brings him to life in this first volume of Coleridge's early years. The book makes you wish you had known Coleridge personally and shared in his life. His life is complex and challenging and so it must have been for Holmes to research and write Coleridge's life. In fact, Holmes seems to have a special knowledge into the life of one of the greatest poets of the English language. This book gave me insights into Coleridge's works I had not had before. If you want to learn more about Samuel Taylor Coleridge, his life and his works, this is the book to read.

Somehow Holmes produces scholarly biographies that make compulsive reading. He never fictionalizes or puts thoughts in his subjects' heads that he has no authority for - and yet he keeps us turning those pages. Is it the subjects he choses? Shelley and Coleridge both had strongly "plotted" lives. Coleridge married the sister of Southey's wife and fell in love with the sister of Wordsworth's wife. I liked his comment on Coleridge's father's predecessor in the the benefice of St Mary's Ottery.

If you think Coleridge was finished by 1804, think again. True, all his great poems had been written but an astonishing life of triumph and tragi-comedy lay ahead. "Coleridge, Darker Reflections" is the long-awaited second half of this award-winning biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It covers the period 1804-1834 - a time when, according to popular belief, Coleridge's fertile imagination had dried up and he faced a slippery slide to an opium-induced decline. But not according to the author Richard Holmes, described as "Our best post-war biographer". He is a superb story teller and unlike so many biographers before him, deeply in touch with his subject. His first volume, "Coleridge Early Visions" introduced the poet to a new generation of admirers (including myself who was fired into writing a play for children about the poet's early magical years). This wonderful book will surely establish STC as a troubled but gigantic genius of the 19th century. Holme's own genius is to show us Coleridge the man. "Always on the knife edge between tragedy and comedy" said Holmes at the London book launch this week (21st October 1998) Holmes has worked assiduously through STC's vast notebooks. Like his namesake, Sherlock, the author clearly enjoys the detection element of biography. His is a personal search for the man, his millieu and his place. Holmes retraces STC's footsteps around England - echoing the desperate perambulations of the wandering poet. Holmes tells this astonishing story at a cracking pace - he has the thriller-writer's gift for making you turn the page. We follow STC through his Malta years - a wonderful evocation of Coleridge's chaotic life. The years of tragic opium decline in London are brought to life (I challenge you not to cry) - and yet there are so many triumphs - the marvellous late poems that Holmes has championed in an earlier collection, the seminal lectures on Shakespeare, Coleridge the thinker and radical, Coleridge the father (not a very good one), the years of relative happiness in Highgate where we find Coleridge the guru. Above all is Coleridge the man. Holmes as only the greatest biographers can, brings his subject completely to life and shows us why Coleridge was such a tour de force in the Romantic movement and why Byron called Wordsworth "a fixed star" but Coleridge "a meteor". There is so much to love in this book - it is hard to know what to recommend. If you have never read a biography before, make this your first. If you think you are familiar with the life of STC, this book, so full of new discoveries and insights, will make you reassess the poet. Holmes is clearly enamoured of his subject. It is a book that will make you laugh out loud in places. You will see exactly why Charles Lamb said of his great friend "He is an archangel, damaged."