Series:

Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

5 total works

Cover of The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 4

During his adult life until his death in 1834, Coleridge made entries in more than sixty notebooks. Neither commonplace books nor diaries, but something of both, they contain notes on literary, theological, philosophical, scientific, social, and psychological matters, plans for and fragments of works, and many other items of great interest. This fourth double volume of the Notebooks covers the years 1819 through 1826. The range of Coleridge's reading, his endless questioning, and his recondite sources continue to fascinate the readers. Included here are drafts and full versions of the later poems. Many passages reflect the technological interests that led to Coleridge's writing of Aids of Reflection, later to become an important source for the Transcendentalists.
Another development in this volume is the startling expansion of Coleridge's interest in "the theory of life" and in chemistry--the laboratory chemistry of the Royal Institution of Great Britain and the theoretical chemistry of German transcendentalists such as Okea, Steffens, and Oersted. Also contained in this volume is an important section on the meaning of marriage.
Kathleen Coburn is Professor Emeritus at Victoria College of the University of Toronto. Merton Christensen was Professor of English at the University of Delaware.
Bollingen Series L:4.

Originally published in 1990.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Cover of The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 2
Nearly 1,400 entries, throwing light on a little-known period: Coleridge's voyage from England to the Mediterranean, his government service in Malta, and his travels in Sicily and Italy. Together with his metrical experiments, studies of Italian poetry and language, and attempts at writing cipher, there are revealing glimpses into such intimate matters as his addiction to opium and his love for Sara Hutchinson.

Cover of The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 3

This third volume covers the period from Coleridge's first lectures on poetry, at the Royal Institution, and the inception of The Friend, to his last lecture in 1819. It is, therefore, the period of his various courses of lectures on Shakespeare and other literary subjects, and on philosophy, of the Biographia Literaria, and the Lay Sermons. During this time, Coleridge's close friendship with Wordsworth deteriorated, ending in an estranging quarrel. His drug addiction was deepest during these years of his life, until he finally found haven in Dr. Gillman's house at Highgate.

Cover of The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 1

Some 1,800 entries, representing the "annus mirabilis" of 1797-1798, descriptions of the Lake Country, and notes on Coleridge's travels in Germany.

Cover of The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 5
This final volume of Bollingen Series L covers the material Coleridge wrote in his notebooks between January 1827 and his death in 1834. In these years, Coleridge made use of the notebooks for his most sustained and far-reaching inquiries, very little of which resulted in publication in any form during his lifetime. Twenty-eight notebooks are here published in their entirety for the first time; entries dated 1827 or later from several more notebooks also appear in this volume. Following previous practice for the edition, notes appear in a companion volume. Coleridge's intellectual interests were wide, encompassing not only literature and philosophy but the political crises of his time, scientific and medical breakthroughs, and contemporary developments in psychology, archaeology, philology, biblical criticism, and the visual arts. In these years, he met and conversed with eminent writers, scholars, scientists, churchmen, politicians, physicians, and artists.
He planned a major work on Logic (still unpublished at his death), and an outline of Christian doctrine, also unfinished, though his work toward this project contributed to On the Constitution of the Church and State (1830) and the revised Aids to Reflection (1831). The reader of these notebooks has the opportunity to see what one of the most admired minds of the English-speaking world thought on several issues--such as race and empire, science and medicine, democracy (particularly in reaction to the Reform Bills introduced in 1831 and 1832), and the authority of the Bible--when he wrote without fear of public disapprobation or controversy.