Coleridge's Notebooks: A Selection / Edition 1

by Seamus Perry

Overview

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was one of the Romantic age's most enigmatic figures, a genius of astonishing diversity; author of some of the most famous poems in the English language; one of England's greatest critics and theorists of literature and imagination; as well as autobiographer, nature-writer, philosopher, theologian, psychologist, and talker. Throughout his life, he confided his thoughts and emotions to his Notebooks, where we can still see his speculations and observations taking shape. This edition presents a selection from this unique work, newly presented, with notes and commentary, for the student as well as the general reader.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198712022
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/08/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	8.80(w) x 5.44(h) x 0.59(d)

About the Author

Seamus Perry is Fellow and Tutor, Balliol College, and a lecturer in the English Faculty of the University of Oxford. He is the author of Coleridge and the Uses of Division (OUP 1999), Coleridge: Interviews and Recollections (Palgrave 2000), and, with Nicola Trott, is editor of 1800: The New Lyrical Ballads (Palgrave 2001).

Table of Contents

Introduction
Abbreviations
A Coleridge Chronology
The Notebooks
I. Youth of Various Powers: 1794-1798
II. Nature-Writer, Journalist, Lover: 1798-1804
III. Malta and Rome: 1804-1806
IV. Friend and Self-Analyst: 1806-1811
V. Critic and Philosopher: 1811-1818
VI. Sage of Highgate: 1818-1834
Index

Editorial Reviews

"This delightfully edited selection of the journals of Samuel Taylor Coleridge...reintroduces the general reader to one of the most fascinating characters in literary history.... Coleridge's Notebooks belong with St. Augustine's Confessions as evidence of the seriousness with which one may take the Socratic command, 'know thyself'.... Dipped into or read through (the commentary is always helpful and at times eloquent; with commentary, these selections very nearly comprise an autobiography), Coleridge's Notebooks brings us as close as can be to the great Romantic, and at times perhaps uncomfortably close to our unacknowledged selves."—The Providence Journal

"[A] brilliantly edited selection, which must now be an indispensable item on any Coleridge bibliography.... [This volume] deftly and concisely explain[s] the debates of the time, ranging over such burning issues as unitarianism, associationism, pantheism and Spinozism, which Coleridge refers to frequently. More importantly, it puts the poet's philosophical and theological arguments with himself... firmly into the context of his own life.... Every single page of this precious book yields up riches. No one interested in human thought and feeling should be without it."—The Guardian

"This is an indispensable collection of the thoughts, observations, metaphors, aphorisms, and musings of a sublimely curious consciousness."—Bill Marx, WBUR Public Arts

From the Publisher