Selected Poems

Coleridge Samuel Taylor

In this unusual selection, one of the great poet-critics of the twentieth century encounters and re-appraises the greatest poet-critic of the nineteenth. William Empson, assisted by David Pirie, chooses from Coleridge's vast and uneven ouevre the salient poems, and edits and annotates them. Here is a classic example of Empson's techniques of creative and scholarly reading and the best possible introduction to the work of one of the most haunting poets in the English language.

"The pith of my system", says Coleridge, "is to make the senses out of mind – not the mind out of the senses, as Locke did".

About the Author

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Ottery St Mary, Devon in 1772. He was the youngest son of the local vicar. He attended Christ's Hospital School in London as a charity boy. In 1791 he went to Jesus College, Cambridge, but did not complete a degree. He began to publish poems in 1793, and in 1795 he met Wordsworth, with whom he composed "Lyrical Ballads". Coleridge's best known poems and poetic torsos include "The Aeolian Harp" (1795), "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" (1797) and his final masterpiece, "Dejection: An Ode" (1802). He died in 1834.

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