NOTEBOOKS

by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

During his adult life until his death in 1834, Coleridge made entries in more than sixty notebooks. Neither commonplace books nor diaries, but something of both, they contain notes on literary, theological, philosophical, scientific, social, and psychological matters, plans for and fragments of works, and many other items of great interest. This fourth double volume of the Notebooks covers the years 1819 through 1826. The range of Coleridge's reading, his endless questioning, and his recondite sources continue to fascinate the reader. Included here are drafts and full versions of the later poems. Many passages reflect the theological interests that led to Coleridge's writing of Aids to Reflection, later to become an important source for the Transcendentalists.Another development in this volume is the startling expansion of Coleridge's interest in "the theory of life" and in chemistry--the laboratory chemistry of the Royal Institution of Great Britain and the theoretical chemistry of German transcendentalists such as Oken, Steffens, and Oersted. Also contained in this volume is an important section on the meaning of marriage.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Born on August 15, 1875 to a physician from Sierra Leone and an Englishwoman, musical composer and conductor Samuel Coleridge-Taylor grew-up in Holborn, England.  He revealed his musical talents at the age of five, began studying the violin at the age of seven, and entered the Royal College of Music in London at the age of fifteen.  By the mid-1890s, due largely to his association with the African American poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar and inspired by the London performance of the visiting Fisk Jubilee Singers from the United States, Coleridge-Taylor begin reflecting the African American experience in his music.

By 1898 when only 23 years of age, Coleridge-Taylor was commissioned to write his Ballade in A Minor for Britain’s Three Choirs Festival.  He is perhaps best remembered for Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, the first of three parts based on poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha.  Coleridge-Taylor’s overture to this particular piece was drawn from the black American spiritual: “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.”  

Coleridge-Taylor’s numerous works were essentially pan-African.  He is often described as an Afro-English composer and conductor, receiving rave reviews in England and in America.  He toured the United States during its post-Reconstruction era and met such notables as the poet James Weldon Johnson and statesman Booker T. Washington.  He was a guest at the White House during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt.

http://www.blackpast.org/gah/coleridg...

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

The notebooks, sorry, the Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge are well worth falling into, but they'll cost you plenty. I have one Bollingen volume bought which tempted me to mow lawns and sell salve all summer for the rest, but a dozen eggs these days costing $49.99 at H-E-B has shuffled my priorities.

In the meantime I've settled for this selection. It's enough to whet your appetite, I guess, but they couldn't have put out a fatter edition in paperback?

Coleridge had wide-ranging interests. Though these are not formal or intended for publication, these entries aren't jottings. Coleridge was rarely "off". These notebooks are instructive for anyone simply enjoying his language, here knotty, here flowing freely. Yes, opium is often present as an influence, but these isn't "drug-writing". This is spiritual wrestling, consuming and being consumed. Some of these read as beautiful prose poems. Some of these are declarations of position on current events, criticism of contemporaries, predecessors, etc. There are dream-records. It's a mix you can dip into an entry at a time or spend an afternoon with.

Interested folks can find the Anima Poetae, which is that fatter selection but free, online here: https://archive.org/details/animapoet...