Coleridge

"The enigmatic personality of Samuel Taylor Coleridge has fascinated the English-speaking world for more than a century and a half. The moving and deeply disturbing story of his life, the manysidedness of his mind and achievement, and the extraordinary nature of his three distinct careers have made him one of the most compelling--and elusive--figures in English letters. Here, in a definitive, all-encompassing critical biography that is a major literary event, Walter Jackson Bate lays open the vast range of Coleridge's interests and talents, and probes the underlying unity of his complex achievements as a major poet, as one of the supreme critics and interpreters of literature, and as one of the seminal religious thinkers of modern times..." -- Book jacket.