Biographia Literaria: The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life & Opinions (v. 7) [Paperback]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1985

Biographia Literaria has emerged over the last century as a supreme work of literary criticism and one of the classics of English literature. Into this volume poured 20 years of speculation about the criticism and uses of poetry and about the psychology of art. Following the text of the 1817 edition, the editors offer the first completely annotated edition of the highly allusive work.

Product Details

• Paperback: 866 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; First Paperback Edition edition (February 1, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691018618
• ISBN-13: 978-0691018614
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.5 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #581,338 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Awesome erudition, January 11, 2003

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D. P. Birkett (Suffern, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Biographia Literaria: The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life & Opinions (v. 7) (Paperback)

I am almost as much in awe of the erudition of the editors (James Engell and W Jackson Bates of the Bolingen edition) as that of Coleridge himself. I think it is often easier to parade one's own wide reading than to recognize someone elses's references. These editors track down the most obscure of Greek, German and Latin quotations and it's an education to read their notes.
There are really three themes in the book. One part is philosophy, one is literary criticism, and one is straight autobiography. These are dispersed throughout.
As regards the philosophy I am probably what he would have called "ignorant of his understanding." Coleridge shows a remarkable knowledge of German philosophy, read in the original language. As far as I know his philosophical ideas have not been highly regarded by pure philosophers.
The literary criticism is the most powerful and original part although the texts he uses will be unfamiliar and even anaccessible to most modern readers.
The fragments of autobiography such as chapter 10 and the first of the Satyrayane's Letters are the most readable.
While this is an unboubted work of genius I have denied it the fifth star because of a certain lack of redability. It is not, for the modern reader, a page-turning work of entertainment. It contains many gems, and much wit, but is one of those we take up today for instruction rather than diversion.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From a "universal mind", July 1, 2002

By 

Extollager (Mayville, ND United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Biographia Literaria: The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life & Opinions (v. 7) (Paperback)

Bede Griffiths, in his book The Golden String, referred to STC as "one of the most universal minds in English literature."

I don't know of anything comparable to Biographia Literaria. At times it's the narrative of a great poet's life. He may veer off into literary criticism or even parody (see the, to me, hilarious section in which he gives "The House that Jack Built" in the rhetorical manner of a recent poet). He powerfully attacks the positivism of his age (and ours). He evokes the wonder of being human.

This scholarly edition is the one to get, if you're going to put in the time to read this rich classic at all.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At Last: A Reader's Biographia Literaria, November 21, 2007

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Joseph Kolupke (Alamosa, CO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Biographia Literaria: The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life & Opinions (v. 7) (Paperback)

Anyone interested in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's work could not receive better advice than to buy the Princeton University Press paperback edition of Biographia Literaria (1817), the closest thing that this most brilliant but also most erratic of all the English romantic poets produced by way of a summa of his life and critical theories. If you've tried it in a cheap edition (e.g., the Modern Library) and set it aside scratching your head over the constant flow of obscure allusions, untranslated quotations in Latin, Greek, and, especially, German, and hundreds of references to other writers, now is the time to give it another shot. The editors, James Engell and Walter Jackson Bate, have meticulously glossed every one of these obscurities in footnotes (not endnotes)that are a model of clarity and concision. The volume has everything you need to appreciate this great work: a thorough and highly readable editors' introduction, a chronology of Coleridge's life, appendices on related correspondence and on passages Coleridge appropriated from the German philosophers, and a complete index. This edition is not, by ordinary standards, new: as volume 7 of Princeton's Collected Works of STC, it's been around as a two-volume hardcover since 1983 and a single volume paperback since 1984. But considering how long it took to produce a usable version for the ordinary reader, it might as well have come out yesterday.