Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772. The youngest of 14 children, he was educated after his father's death and excelled in classics. He attended Christ's Hospital and Jesus College, Cambridge. While attending college, he befriended two other Romanticists, Charles Lamb and Robert Southey, the latter causing him to eventually drop out of college and pursue both poetic and political ambitions.
Although he often wrote poetry, his talent did not manifest until after 1794, when he transitioned into what would later be described as Romantic poetry. During this time, he worked with Southey on developing an ideal political government called Pantisocracy. Eventually, Coleridge would give up his political ambitions and focus on his poetic career.
Parents Coleridge's grandfather, the elder John Coleridge, was a weaver by trade, and, as Coleridge claimed to William Godwin, he was also "half–poet and half–madman".Ashton 1997 p. 12 In 1719, his wife Mary gave birth to John, the younger. Their son was sent to the Crediton Grammar School until the age of 15, when the bankruptcy of the elder prompted the younger to seek employment. While the younger despaired at his fate, a random gentleman discovered him and offered him a job as an usher for a school. While working for the school, he took up a wife, had four daughters, and pursued his studies. In 1747, he was accepted into Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, at the age of 28, and studied classics and Hebrew. After finishing college, the younger John Coleridge became a teacher in Devon.Ashton 1997 pp. 12–13
A few years after moving to Devon, the younger John Coleridge's wife died. In 1753, he married Ann Bowden, a woman from Exmoor of a modest background. They had 9 sons and 1 daughter, with Samuel Coleridge being the youngest. By 1772, the year of Samuel's birth, John Coleridge was a well-respected vicar of the parish and had advanced to the position of Head Master of The King's Free Grammar School at Ottery. The positions brought the family only a small income, but they did earn the friendship of local baronet, Stafford Northcote. In addition to his employment, John Coleridge also wrote a few religious works and a Latin grammar.Ashton 1997 p. 13
Childhood
Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in the rural town of Ottery St Mary, Devon, England, the youngest of the children.Radley, 13 Of his childhood, Coleridge suggests that he "took no pleasure in boyish sports" but instead read "incessantly" and played by himself.Coleridge 1889 p. 2 He was close to his father and distant from his mother, a woman whom he would provoke in an attempt to receive her attention. At the age of seven, Coleridge ran away from home after an argument with his older brother Frank that provoked his mother to punish him.Ashton 1997 pp. 14–15 He would tell the story to his friends in his later years with particular emphasis on his mother and "how miserable my Mother must be" about him running away. A search party was formed with family friend Northcote eventually being the one to find Coleridge and bring him home. This event appeared in Coleridge's later poems including "Monody on the Death of Chatterton" (1829).Ashton 1997 p. 15
John Coleridge died in 1781 when Samuel was 8 years-old. Since his father was a source of happiness for the young Coleridge, the death affected him deeply. He was also the only son left at home; Frank was enlisted in the Navy just prior to John's death and Coleridge's other brothers were busy with careers or their own families. One of the brothers, George, took responsibility for Coleridge.Ashton 1997 pp. 16–17 Of him, Coleridge declared that he was "father, brother, and every thing".Letter to Luke Coleridge, 12 May 1787 Without his father around, Coleridge and his family were forced to move from the schoolhouse to a nearby home with a loss of their income. Soon after, one of John Coleridge's former students, Judge Buller, arranged for Coleridge to be sent to Christ's Hospital. Coleridge was accepted after his mother petitioned on 28 March 1782, along with Fulwood Smerdon, John Coleridge's successor, and Samuel Taylor, Coleridge's godfather, that he be accepted. After acceptance, he attended a school in Hertford to prepare him for Christ's Hospital.Ashton 1997 pp. 18–19
Education Christ's Hospital was founded in London by Edward VI in 1552 and intended to educate orphans and the poor. By the 18th century, it catered to educating the children of poor gentry. The age of the institution and the traditions of the school soon became a point of pride for Coleridge.Ashton 1997 p. 20 He remained there throughout his childhood, studying and writing poetry, and it was at the school that he studied the works of Virgil and William Lisle Bowles.Morley 1884 pp. i-iv While at school, Coleridge was often in the school's sanatorium for a mild feverish condition and spent time by himself reading and studying classics. Although he was known for his speech aptitude, he was also known for his poor manner of dress. He also composed poetry, mostly imitations of Milton, Gray and others.Ashton 1997 pp. 22–27
During that time, Coleridge became a friend of Charles Lamb. Unlike Lamb, Coleridge did not have family in London to spend his vacation with, which caused the young Coleridge strain. Over the nine years that he attended the school, he only returned home 3 or 4 times. He experienced loneliness throughout the time until two of his brothers, Luke and George, came to London. He wrote many letters to his brothers, but only one to his mother during his time in London. Luke was important to Coleridge and Luke's moving to Devon affected the schoolboy. Coleridge made other friends, including Charles Le Grice, but this could not keep Coleridge from missing Luke, to whom Coleridge would write often.Ashton 1997 pp. 22–23 In one letter, Coleridge wrote: "Legrice, and I, are very polite, very civil, and very cold. So that I doubly lament your absence, as I have now no one, to whom I can open my heart in full confidence."Letter to Luke 12 May 1787
With the letter was one of Coleridge's first poems, "Easter Holidays", which discusses both present happiness and future sorrow. Another poem written that year was "Dura Navis", a poem that is possibly about his brother Frank and describes a state of loneliness and solitude along with battles at sea and eventual cannibalism of the crew. He continued to write poetry, including "Monody" (1790) which compares himself with Thomas Chatterton, a young poet who had committed suicide. He composed "The Destruction of the Bastile" that responded to the fall of the Bastille during the previous year. The poem contains Coleridge's cheering on of events within revolutionary France and a possible revolution in England. While he stayed at the school's sanatorium recovering from illness, Coleridge wrote the poem "Pain: Composed in Sickness". It was also during this time that Coleridge was first prescribed opium, in the form of laudanum, as a treatment of his fever.Ashton 1997 pp. 24–29 The deaths of his brother Luke and sister Ann in 1791 near the end of his school career prompted Coleridge to write the sonnet "On Receiving an Account that his only Sister's Death was Inevitable".Ashton 1997 p. 17
By 1788, Coleridge befriended a few other boys including Robert Allen and Tom Evans. Together, the three boys would visit Evans's home in London. It was there that Coleridge met Mary Evans, the oldest of Tom's three sisters, and Coleridge became infatuated with her. He also became attached to Tom's mother, a woman that later took care of the boys over Coleridge's 1791 Christmas vacation for college.Ashton 1997 p. 25 Coleridge later told George, "I have indeed experienced from her a tenderness scarcely inferior to the solicitude of maternal affection."Ashton 1997 qtd. p. 25 This affection developed to the point of Coleridge composing a poem "To Disappointment" that places Mrs. Evans in the role of his mother. His involvement with the family was the first of Coleridge's long relationship with predominately female circles of friends. His feelings on the matter combined affection and sexual attraction in a way that he was uncomfortable with, and Coleridge was to later remark that he was unable to have sex with his wife because he viewed her in a sisterly manner.Ashton 1997 pp. 25–27
At the end of his time at Christ's Hospital, he received a scholarship to attend Jesus College, Cambridge and was to begin his time at the college in September 1791. During his transition from Christ's Hospital, Coleridge composed "On Quitting School for College", a poem that contains his saying good bye to his previous homes in a manner that was more positive than how he truly felt about those places. Although Coleridge enjoyed some of the moments at school, he believed that his time was that of deprivation and focused mostly on future happiness that would not actualize in the way he had hoped.Ashton 1997 pp. 30–33
College
From 1791 until 1794, Coleridge attended Jesus College. He received £70 per year in scholarships to attend the college with £30 from the Rustat Scholarship, a scholarship for the sons of Anglican clergymen. However, this was only enough to provide Coleridge with a meagre living at Jesus College, which he would complain of often. This was compounded by the debt that Coleridge began to accrue and avoided paying. It is uncertain how Coleridge used his income, but it is possible that he ran into debt because of indulgence in wine and opium, the drug that he continued to use throughout college. It is also possible that he spent his money on prostitutes, which he deeply regretted and even had nightmares over. He was prone to sexual nightmares, and he recorded one such dream in 1803 about being pursued by a prostitute at both Christ's Hospital and Jesus College.Ashton 1997 pp. 33–37
Although he had few friends at first, he befriended Thomas Middleton, a student at Pembroke College, who acted as "patron and protector" according to Coleridge's account in Biographia Literaria. His education was spent working in the chapel and attending lectures in both mathematics and classics.Ashton 1997 pp. 33–34 Coleridge also wrote many poems and submitted some for various competitions. In July 1792 he won the Browne Gold Medal for a Sapphic ode that he wrote on the slave trade.Radley, 14 Later in December, he competed for the Craven Scholarship but did not win. He also wrote more personal poems, including one written about lost love accompanying a letter to Mary Evans on 13 February 1792. Throughout college and in his poetry, Coleridge involved himself with politics, including issues around the French Revolution, the slave trade, and the abolition of the Test and Corporation Acts. Coleridge became involved with issues surrounding the Test and Corporation Acts when a tutor at Jesus College, William Frend, was placed on trial during early 1793 by the Fellows of Jesus College for being a Unitarian and no longer supporting Anglicanism. Although Frend was removed from the college in April 1793, he influenced Coleridge's political and religious beliefs to the point of Coleridge eventually working as a Unitarian preacher after leaving Jesus College.Ashton 1997 pp. 35–38