Biographia Literaria

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George Watson (Editor)

Originally conceived as a short preface to Sibylline Leaves, by the time Coleridge's Biographia Literaria was published in 1817 it had expanded into a two-volume apologia for the Romantic poet's "literary life and opinions." Coleridge here develops a theory of the poetic imagination, in which an artist's passion, will, memory, and perception intersect to engender her or his work. This unique edition is essential to understanding the influences and ideology of Romanticism.

Genres: Poetry, Philosophy, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Biography, Classics, Romanticism

303 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1817

About the author

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as his major prose work Biographia Literaria.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Shakespeare

After 73 years on the Autism spectrum, I no longer listen closely to folks who complain overmuch. Why should I? I have a far better time reading my ebullient buddies' books. As in LITERARY buddies…

And Coleridge was one of the first of 'em!

But coming of age comes even to those with Asperger's, and it means coming down to the crunch. Being a believer in a Higher Being, I loudly protested and attempted to avoid it.

This is the dense memoir, full of amusing literary segues and reminiscences, of which the style primarily decided my own present-day way of writing. When I read it over the Christmas break in 1969, I immediately sensed that it was, for me, the right way to write.

So my reviews now are chock full of my own dreams and memories.

When Coleridge wrote it, he was a full-fledged opium addict. Hence its style is somewhat loose and disjointed. But, man, is he fun to read!

Here Coleridge revels at first in his rocky relationship with the epochal William Wordsworth, after their initial meeting and melding of minds in Lyrical Ballads, co-written in the English Lake Country. And, natch, he dishes the dirt on his critics.

So it is fun, though not so much for me at the time, for various reasons which I'll divulge later. And Coleridge?

Well, his heyday was over and he knew it. The reason he could still write with any joy lies in the medicinal laudanum (opium) he was prescribed for his nerves. So it goes. Like my own meds.

But first a bit about how reading it made me later spiral downward to the point where I finally made my decision to boycott my own coming of age. I know now that it was a 'bad play, Shakespeare,' but I did it anyway...
***

I would find soon enough under intense sequestered scrutiny that the evil Siegfried in the sixties sitcom, Get Smart, really DID have 'Vays to make us Talk!' It all started by my reaction to a single essay in my Music and Tonality course, which ended that March.

You see, the essay that would determine my mark on that course hinged on was an outline of the tonalities in Wagner's Tristan.

Simple? Wait for it...

It was anything but.

Wagner's late tonal structure is ALL OVER THE MAP. It was, of course, impossible to map that chromaticism into tonalities. I thus abandoned the essay as it was humanly impossible. And barely passed that course.

It was due to that anomaly that I decided to adopt that same party line with the abandoning of adolescent absolutes that is coming of age. I boycotted it. And as I said earlier, the Siegfrieds of this world opposed me.

I became, as with Coleridge here, an avid supporter of the puritanical Clerisy: the imaginary Kingdom of Heaven for true idealists!

But modern psychological treatments are a rum thing. If you don't fit the square hole nowadays, you're MADE square, alas...
***

Now that you know of my boycott on ever fully maturing, I can go back to reading Coleridge that Christmas break...

I got to the point in my reading, you see, where I needed to find a certain Coleridgean reference in Mom's library to decide on a matter of interpretation. You couldn't Google it back in '69! So I walked over a few paces to go see an adult library clerk.

There was some sort of discussion going on, but I went ahead anyway, after excusing myself. They wouldn't mind - it'd only take a sec. That clerk was only asserting her power -

Only, back then, I had never encountered raw power in process between adults!

I thought it was just assert, bargain, come to a compromise and make a deal. Jacques Derrida, in his study of Rousseau - Of Grammatology - told me that it was something Much different. He calls it The Supplement. We Faithful Ones call it Sin.

Accepting it or rejecting it are both thresholds into adulthood. In my day and political climate acceptance was encouraged, and I rejected it. The repercussions were difficult, to say the least!

And Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Jacques Derrida Rejected this coming of age as well because of it, also, preferring their natural manner.

But read Derrida on Rousseau if you want to glimpse a Vaster and Higher World… this is not a joke.
***

And now, on clear days like today, I'm happy.

Constrained by my meds, as Rousseau and Coleridge were later constrained in modern times by a mocking diagnosis of bipolar disorder -

I can Still see my original, natural life clearly - Through a Glass Darkly.

Just as Coleridge did all the rest of his life...

With a little help from his friend, medicinal opium.

[Rozzer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poor Coleridge. It's impossible to go against the almost unanimous judgment of his contemporaries regarding his brilliant intelligence and conversation. But the reality is that he never, ever was able to make that intelligence and brilliance as productive as it should have been. And as can be attested by some others who have been opium slaves (some, not all, viz: DeQuincey, Burroughs et al.), Coleridge's serious and life-long addiction to laudanum is most probably the cause. And so we have Biographia Literaria, a mildly interesting but failed work the prose of which winds back and forth and in and around itself in a manner that makes it difficult to read except in fits and starts and little bits and pieces now and then. I owned this book for more than thirty years, frequently taking it off the shelf in attempts to read through it as with other books. No. Impossible. An hour's worth of BL would always either have me asleep or bored out of my sconce. Poor Coleridge.

[Jee Koh · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absorbing read as Coleridge seeks a philosophical foundation for his aesthetics. He mounts a convincing defense of Wordsworth's poetic genius and a withering attack on his poetic theory. An impressively serious intellectual endeavor written in the trail-blazing form of an intellectual autobiography.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Biographia Literaria, 1817, is a work on literary aesthetics or literary theory. Practical criticism there is, Coleridge does scrutinize particular works now and then, but such examination is meant to exemplify some particular critical perspective of the poet.

The first part of Biographia Literaria, the philosophical part from Chapters I-XIII, was completed in July, 1815. It contained his philosophical and metaphysical theories, and their impact on his life. Then he began writing the Preface to the book, the Preface grew in his hand, and was soon as extensive as the book itself. It now forms the Part II of Biographia Literaria, Chapter XIV-XXII, the part which examines decisively Wordsworth's theory of poetry and poetic diction, and which is of sweeping implication as far as literary theory is concerned.

The link between the two parts is the poet's theory of imagination. The manuscript was then handed over to the publisher. Coleridge first intended to call the work Autobiographia Literaria, but later changed it to Biographia Literaria.

Biographia Literaria is a work of immense value, but it too suffers from the customary errors of Coleridge. As its name signifies, it pretends to be a record of the poet's literary rearing, but there is little uninterrupted narrative, there is too much of philosophising and too many side issues and detours.

After sixteen chapters of philosophising, almost completely immaterial, he discusses the poetical theory of his friend Wordsworth and then in the last seven chapters of the book, he gives an extraordinary demonstration of his critical powers. He analyses the Wordsworthian theory in a masterly fashion, and separating the good from the bad, upon the sounder elements bases a critical dogma of great and permanent value.

The last chapters of the book, which are the most permanent elucidation of the Romantic theory as it exists in English, place Coleridge in the first flight of critics.

To conclude, ‘Biographia Literaria’ has serious and obvious faults, as pointed out above and there is much in it that is unrelated and superfluous. There are too many side-issues and detours. Coleridge is often disorderly and chaotic.

There is a strange assortment of philosophy, literary theory and biography.

But, all said and done, the Biographia still remains a great "world-book".

The book is among the few which constitute the very Bible of Criticism. The magnitude and uniqueness of the book arises from the fact that here, for the first time, a blend of philosophy and literature had been achieved. Coleridge based literary criticism on human psychology: he has used psychology to explain the process of artistic creation. Thus the work is a unique milestone in the history of literary criticism.

[James Henderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge completed his Biographia Literaria on September 15th in 1815. A sort of intellectual autobiography, the Biographia contains reflections on wide range of philosophical and literary issues. The work is long and seemingly loosely structured, and although there are autobiographical elements, it is not a straightforward or linear autobiography. Instead, it is meditative, with numerous essays on philosophy. In particular, it discusses and engages the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. Being fluent in German, Coleridge was one of the first major English literary figures to translate and discuss Schelling, in particular.The concluding paragraph is a speculation on the connection between reason and religious faith, the two a continuum “even as the day softens away into the sweet twilight, and twilight, hushed and breathless, steals into the darkness.” The final sentence contains the sort of ringing (though often obscure or wandering) prose that can be found throughout:
"The upraised eye views only the starry heaven which manifests itself alone: and the outward beholding is fixed on the sparks twinkling in the awful depth, though suns of other worlds, only to preserve the soul steady and collected in its pure act of inward adoration to the great I AM, and to the filial WORD that re-affirmeth it from eternity to eternity, whose choral echo is the universe."

[Dionysius the Areopagite]

I must wait to give this my undivided attention... either in the near-future, or somewhere 50 years from now puffing on a pipe in a labyrinthine library sunken into leather chair, pausing to reflect on how strange it was that no one else ever seemed to notice that sirens sound just like babies wailing, lighting an opium candle

[oswald · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish he would explain his explanation

[Vishvapani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I reread the Biographia after many years and after reading Richard Holmes huge biography. that helped a lot - I could hear his voices and stay with him through all the digressions, the obscure dives into metaphysics and right to the incoherent ending. Of course it isn't a complete work of aesthetics or autobiography or criticism: it's a way into Coleridge's mind, for those who wish to take it. And we will do so most likely because we already believe that this is a worthwhile pursuit.

For my money, account of the imagination is powerful and persuasive; the analysis of Wordsworth holds up well, you can see how Coleridge was carving out the shape of what eventual became literary criticism, and the autobiography is mostly entertaining.

If you want to immerse yourself in the Romantics, you need to read the Biographia. Otherwise ...keep an open mind and just keep reading.

[globulon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually have a 1920's roughly pocket sized hard back Everyman edition of this that I picked up in Powell's in Portland on a visit there.

I've browsed around in it a bit and read some excerpts previously. I like it pretty well. It's not as engaging to me as Ezra Pound's literary musings but in much the same vein.

I just recently read Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads and intend to follow up by reading Coleridge's thoughts on the matter here.

[Joanna · Rating 1 out of 5]

A mind-numbingly dull and utterly pretentious attack on the poetic principles espoused by my new hero, William Wordsworth. For someone who claims imagination is the poet's highest faculty, he uses very little imagination in his own writing. I'm definitely not a fan.

[Henry Sturcke · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s frustrating that the book description of this edition of Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria should perpetuate the traditional account of its genesis, an account that the editor, George Watson, takes pains to refute.

Watson describes the origins of the book, dating back to more than fifteen years before its eventual publication. From the outset, Coleridge intended a work that would reflect his dual interest in philosophy and poetry. Watson concedes that the formal design of the book cannot be defended, but argues that Coleridge succeeded “for the first and (so far) for the last time in English criticism” in “discovering a causal link between the two” in the poet’s imagination, set out by Coleridge in chapters 12 and 13, the heart of the book. Hitherto, “imagination” and “fancy” had been used interchangeably, but Coleridge differentiates the two, assigning to imagination, especially the poetic imagination, the power to dissolve sense perceptions to recreate, idealize, or unify them. In contrast, fancy, a lesser power, can only recall, with its creativity limited to association. At least that’s what I make of it, though I had a hard time following his discussion. He even coined a term to describe this faculty, “esemplastic” (the power to form into one), but this hasn’t caught on.

This achievement has been clouded not only by the ever-perpetuated tale that the Biographia is nothing more than an overgrown preface to a collection of poems, but also because a printer’s miscalculation forced Coleridge to hurriedly pad the manuscript at the last minute. This edition omits the padding and thus, Watson claims, is “the first to present the Biographia as nearly as possible according to the author’s intention.”

I can understand the widespread currency of the “garrulous preface” legend, however. Like a magpie, Coleridge seems to hop about, collecting shiny objects. The result: a fascinating record of a lively mind. He read widely and thought deeply, but the fecundity of his mind seems to have sabotaged his production. The footnotes of this book teem with announcements of forthcoming projects that never saw the light of day, mirroring the fifteen-year gap between plan and execution of this book.

One of the pleasures of reading Biographia was to follow a great literary critic at work as he shows by precept and example what makes great poetry. I noted several passages, including this: “The ultimate end of criticism is much more to establish the principles of writing than to furnish rules how to pass judgement on what has been written by others; if indeed it were possible that the two could be separated.” Coleridge’s work as a great critic is supported by his acute psychological insight.

One of Coleridge’s notable services rendered was to transmit the best of contemporary German philosophy to the English-speaking world. This book includes lengthy passages translated from Schelling and Lessing. He names both, but should have been clearer about where their words (in his translation) begin and end. His carelessness left him open to charges of plagiarism. He, in turn, felt misunderstood, one of many things that rankled him when others criticized his work. No doubt much of the criticism was unjustified, but his counterattacks are some of the least enjoyable passages in this book.

Still, overall, I enjoyed the book and learned a great deal from it.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

(If you are willing to launch into this, find an edition with bigger print and more leading. This is physically hard to read -- which doesn't help when you reading an intellectually difficult book)

What would be the reasons for reading "Biographia Literaria?" Well, interest in Coleridge. And in Wordsworth, since the best parts of this are discussions of Wordsworth's poems and poetic theories. Interest in early 19th century Romantic philosophy, and how it grew from German models. Those were some of mine.

But it IS a difficult read. I have to admit that I couldn't really follow the arguments in the first half of the book. They are difficult enough on their own, but then Coleridge was famous for his digressive conversations. In fact, he was remembered as the greatest "talker" of his time. Just plug him in and watch him go! And that is one of the pleasures of this. We get to see/hear the great man just go -- ramble through the dark corners of his mind as he moves toward the light. Yes, this prose is a reflection of his speech, and it may be a reflection of his opium addiction. There is not a sense of self-critical introspection, which there clearly is in his poems.

One of his biographers advised that we just read this and let the language wash over us. I think that is good advice. There are moments when the arguments are easy to follow -- particularly when he is talking about the literary culture of his time -- but then much, indeed most, of it is hard, even impossible, to follow after a couple of clauses.

But moments arise. Just sentences. And they are wonderful. I'll look back through in no order and find ones I marked"

"I write in metre because I am about to use a language different from that of prose."

"A second promise of genius is the choice of subjects very remote from the private interests and circumstances of the writer himself."

And then, of course, this -- ". . . that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith." (And, yes, it might be worth all the struggle of this to get to this statement in its context)

I could go on. There are many many more gems buried in here. But the mining of these gems is difficult. I fear I many have missed too many in all the prose. I am glad I made my way through this, but someone would have to have very specific interests for me to recommend this to them.

[Gabriel Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

note..i only rate five stars for worth reading or one star for need never have been written.

I am so grateful to this man, S.T. Coleridge, for sharing his extraordinary mind with me when I was less than twenty years old, with an immediacy and intimacy which can only inspire love.

More than forty years ago I pulled this book randomly off a library shelf and it induced a great friendship which warms me to recollect.

Despite loathing much Romanticism, poets who sprain their ankles to write mortality odes, coddled royalists who monetize the Natchez, and other variants, the English R's are better represented. The orphans and misfits are the best.

Coleridge is really unto himself.

Although when I read this book I had the faintest grasp of its theological and philosophical terrain, that didn't matter. It was that mind....in motion, a mind which could go anywhere with angelic permission.

I am stupefied that some reviewers here found it boring, pretentious and unreadable.

[Leanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

just finished this at 4 am and i adore how much coleridge loves his pal wordsworth... yes show ur love for ur friend by writing him a highly academic critical text that literally only the two of you fully understand.. luv that for u <33

[Chethana Ramesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read a detailed review:

http://chethanaramesh.blogspot.com/20...

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

TIL imagination is a Protestant invention

[Mubtasim Fuad · Rating 2 out of 5]

সারারাত জেগে পড়ে গেলাম Difference between Fancy and Imagination আর পরীক্ষায় আসল আর এক ছাতার মাথা! ইংলিশে অনার্স করার চাইতে ঘু খাওয়া বহুত ভালো 😩

[Mike Blackwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

An autobiography after my own heart, as Coleridge provides us with very little biographical information and instead focuses more on the "Opinions" aspect of the title, which, fortunately, are opinions about poetry, literature, and philosophy -- some of the few things in our world worth having opinions about. The major topics of the book are an analysis of Wordsworth's ideas of poetry, which are then contrasted with Coleridge's own; and a long philosophical treatise regarding idealism that is cut off near the end because a friend told him it would be boring. It's funny to me that he doesn't then go back and delete the chapter, but instead just stops writing right at the point where he was when his friend's letter arrived, and even inserts the letter as an explanation.

So, the book is a bit of a mess, but there is a lot of good stuff in it. I especially appreciated his chapter imploring young writers to never try to make money through writing. Although it's probably best to learn that the hard way.

[wally · Rating 3 out of 5]

coleridge, 1772-1834, the romanticism, english poet and critic....originality, unity, and transcendence.

a triangle, the poetry, the poet, and the reader.

nothing really new there, right, didn't aristotle acknowledge the....followers, or the lack thereof?

only when the poet "diffuses a tone and spirit of unity...blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial" will the triangle be completed by the reader.

...supposes a literate crowd...i guess, hey? not those extremists mentioned in the empty chamber?

"the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colors of imagination."

yay, say true and thank god, big big, verily. i see a bad moon risin...blue moon! you left me standing alone! w/o a drink in my hand!

"the reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity, of be a restless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the pleasureable activity of the mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself."

yay! say true...the journey, not the end...the getting there, seeing what happens along the way.

the reader is on the raft, heading down the river, yes?

good sense and imagination...a plus...the idea of transcendence is there, originality, too.

"the poet gives us the liveliest image of succession with the feeling of simultaneouosness."

as if it exists outside itself, perhaps...

coleridge seems to be of the opinion that genius is inherited, or mutated...not something that one can develop...well, back to pounding nails i guess...no great loss there. not like i was ever going to make a dent, unless it be in a publisher's car...that would be one approach, instead of the anonymous manuscript tied to a concrete block, tossed, w/hope, thru a window...crash...i replace windows, too, so if one didn't work, there is the job security...and so on.

"utter aloofness." another idea from sam tee. a "gentle and unnoticed control" yes.



i believe he also addresses the disagreement wordsworth received...all that "low and rustic life"

poo white hillbillie trash i spose, paula jones, the whites in huck finn, who were able to sneak in under the radar, for all the good that did...and so on.

[Gary Varga · Rating 3 out of 5]

In some form of irony, I feel that I lack understanding like, perhaps even more so than, the Coleridge who anonymously writes to himself within this text. This book has opened my eyes and ears to poetry and I am left feeling gratefully more knowledgeable of my ignorance than before.

My ignorance is not limited to poetry but also to the classics and contemporaries discussed in this book. Without the editor's footnotes this volume would have been nearly indecipherable to me.

Although no review is without the context of the reader, more needs to be said of the book. This is an exceptionally interesting treatise on the writing of poems and the poems of and up to that time. Particular attention is paid to the works of William Wordsworth, an acquaintance of Coleridge.

Much of the discussion and critique of poems, poetry and philosophy was beyond my current knowledge, however, the clarity of language (as one would expect from Coleridge after reading this book) even allows novices to follow much of what is said, if only from a distance.

Please note that this is far from being a collection of poems. It is a discourse on poetry and philosophy in the context of literary theory. A fascinating experience nonetheless.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

An important book, but not an easy read, particularly the first half, before Coleridge sets into his thesis about what constitutes poetry (an argument with the preface to Lyrical Ballads, which he persuaded Wordsworth to write), and then critiques poets of his time and of antiquity (including Wordsworth and Shakespeare). Grab a highlighter, but don't expect his prose to be as good as his poetry -- it isn't.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coleridge's outstanding theoretical inquiry, while occasionally hard to muddle through, remains a brilliant statement of both Romantic sensibility and timeless observations of literature - as well as a real smack-down for William Wordsworth. This is where Coleridge comes into his own, even more so than his literary works.

[Meredyth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a really important milestone in Liteary history, as it was the first real literary critique. The personal frendship and rivalry between Wordsworth and Coleridge invite the reader to speculate on some of Coleridge's observations and motives; however his insights are well argued and the publication of this work ushed in what we understand today to be Literary Theory.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense dopey as a laudanum dream, but when a kindly old Coleridge scholar in his last year before retirement forces you to read it through, and then again once more, infinitely rewarding.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

it took me 3 years to make my way through this, and now that its all said and done, i think they're needs to be an abridged version.

[Avis Black · Rating 1 out of 5]

Biographia Literaria has proven that Coleridge's obsessions and interests are not for me.

[Catherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had trouble maintaining my interest in this book.