Samuel Taylor Coleridge

An attractive, pocket-book collection offers a generous selection of the greatest work of the Romantic poet containing his best-known images, including such classics as "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Kubla Khan," and "Christabel."

A few magical poems by Coleridge remain among the most celebrated works in the language: KUBLA KHAN, CHRISTABEL and - above all -THE ANCIENT MARINER. All are included in this volume, together with many other superb but lesser-known poems and a selected prose extracts from the BIOGRAPHIA LITERIA and the NOTEBOOKS which show that Coleridge was not only a major poet but also a great critic and prose writer.

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.

In this unusual selection, a poet-critic of the 20th century encounters a poet-critic of the 19th, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). William Empson, assisted by David Pirie, chooses from Coleridge's vast and uneven oeuvre the salient poems; he edits and annotates them. Here is a classic example of Empson's techniques of creative and scholarly reading, an introduction to the work of the most haunting poet in the English language. "The pith of my system", says Coleridge, "is to make the senses out of the mind not the mind out of the senses, as Locke did". Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was born in Ottery St Mary, Devon. He attended Christ's Hospital School in London as a charity boy. Charles Lamb was a junior classmate. In 1791 he went to Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1795 he met Wordsworth, with whom he composed "Lyrical Ballads". Between 1795 and 1802 he wrote his best poems and poetic torsos including "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", "Christabel", "Frost at Midnight", "Kubla Khan" and his final masterpiece, "Dejection: An Ode".

Biographia Literaria has emerged over the last century as a supreme work of literary criticism and one of the classics of English literature. Into this volume poured 20 years of speculation about the criticism and uses of poetry and about the psychology of art. Following the text of the 1817 edition, the editors offer the first completely annotated edition of the highly allusive work.

DESCRIPTION OF BOOK: "THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER", "CHRISTABEL", "FEARS IN SOLITUDE," "KUBLA KHAN", AND MOST OF THE SHORTERPOEMS. MAJOR SECTIONS OF THE BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. SELECTIONS FROMSAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE'S LETTERS, LITERARY CRITICISM, NOTEBOOKS, POLITICAL ESSAYS, AND PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS.

A scholarly edition of works by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

Oxford Scholarly Classics is a new series that makes available again great academic works from the archives of Oxford University Press. Reissued in uniform series design, the reissues will enable libraries, scholars, and students to gain fresh access to some of the finest scholarship of the last century.

A scholarly edition of works by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.