Book description
In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet
of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical
reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights
into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate
introduction to the most important poets in our literature. In Xanadu
did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred
river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.
-- Kubla Khan
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was born in Ottery St Mary,
Devon, the youngest son of a clergyman. He was educated at Christ's
Hospital School, London, where he began his friendship with Charles
Lamb, and Jesus College, Cambridge. He first met Dorothy and William
Wordsworth in 1797 and a close association developed between them,
issuing in their groundbreaking joint-publication, Lyrical Ballads, in
1799. Coleridge subsequently settled in the Lake District , and
thereafter in London, where he lectured on Shakespeare and published his
literary and philosophical theories in the Biographia Literaria (1817).
He died in 1834, having overseen a final edition of his Poetical Works.
As poet, philosopher and critic, Coleridge stands as one of the seminal
figures of his time. James Fenton was born in 1949 and graduated from
Magdalen College, Oxford in 1970. His poems were collected in Terminal
Moraine (1972), The Memory of War (1982), Children in Exile (1983) and
Out of Danger (1994). His Selected Poems have been published this year
(that is, 2006). His lectures, delivered as Oxford Professor of Poetry,
were collected in The Strength of Poetry (2001). An Introduction to
English Poetry appeared in 2002. His essays art history were collected
in Leonardo's Nephew (1998). This year he has also published a history
of the Royal Academy.
