Coleridge : Early Visions

by RichardHolmes (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $3.25

  Winner of the 1989 Whitbread Prize for Book of the Year, this is the first volume of Holmes's seminal two-part examination of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of Britain's greatest poets. Coleridge: Early Visions is the first part of Holmes's classic biography of Coleridge that forever transformed our view of the poet of 'Kubla Khan' and his place in the Romantic Movement. Dismissed by much recent scholarship as an opium addict, plagiarist, political apostate and mystic charlatan, Richard Holmes's Coleridge leaps out of the page as a brilliant, animated and endlessly provoking figure who invades the imagination. This is an act of biographical recreation which brings back to life Coleridge's poetry and encyclopaedic thought, his creative energy and physical presence. He is vivid and unexpected. Holmes draws the reader into the labyrinthine complications of his subject's personality and literary power, and faces us with profound questions about the nature of creativity, the relations between sexuality and friendship, the shifting grounds of political and religious belief.

• Used

  Paperback
  1990

  $3.25

  This biography considers Coleridge as a man apart from his writings. Holmes' objective is to give an impression of what the poet was like in person and as a conversationalist. Holmes reveals him to be disorganized, slothful, neurotically anxious and overly dependent on others. The book won the 1989 Whitbread Book of the Year Award. The author has also written Shelley: The Persuit , which won the Somerset Maugham Award and a novel Footsteps .

• Used

  Hardcover
  1998

  $3.25

  This biography should transform our view of the writer of Kubla Khan and his place in the Romantic Movement. Dismissed by much recent scholarship as an opium addict, plagiarist, political apostate and mystic charlatan, Holmes sees Coleridge as a brilliant, animated and endlessly provoking figure who invades the imagination. Holmes draws the reader into the labyrinthine complications of his subject's personality and literary power, and faces us with questions about the nature of creativity, the relations between sexuality and friendship, the shifting grounds of political and religious belief.