Coleridge: Darker Reflections

Description

Timely reissue of the second volume of Holmes's classic biographies of one of the greatest Romantic poets. Richard Holmes's biography of Coleridge transforms our view of the poet of 'Kubla Khan' forever. Holmes's Coleridge leaps out of these pages as the brilliant, animated and endlessly provoking poet of genius that he was. This second volume covers the last 30 years of Coleridge's career (1804-1834) during which he travelled restlessly through the Mediterranean, returned to his old haunts in the Lake District and the West Country, and finally settled in Highgate. It was a period of domestic and professional turmoil. His marriage broke up, his opium addiction increased, he quarrelled with Wordsworth, his own son Hartley Coleridge (a gifted poet himself) became an alcoholic. And after a desperate time of transition, Coleridge re-emerged on the literary scene as a new kind of philosophical and meditative author.

Richard Holmes is one of Britain's leading biographers. Footsteps, which he published in 1985, was hailed as a 'modern masterpiece'. He is a regular feature writer and reviewer and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was awarded the OBE in 1992. He lives in London and Norwich with the novelist Rose Tremain.

'One of the greatest biographies of the century. Pure joy to read, it is a shimmering portrait of the mature artist veering between brilliance and despair' Financial Times 'This -- and I can't remember ever thinking this before so strongly -- is a biography to grow old with' Independent