06 Feb Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge owes his fame to his masterful poetry and also to his influence on other poets, including his friend William Wordsworth. The two first met in 1795, when they set up homes a few miles apart in Somerset. Coleridge Cottage, now owned by the National Trust, is where Coleridge created some of his greatest work. He wrote the first of his so-called “conversation poems” there in 1797, plus the first part of the long narrative poem Christabel. This was also the time when Coleridge and Wordsworth published their Lyrical Ballads (1798) which started the Romantic Movement. Included in the collection is Coleridge’s great epic poem: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798).

Coleridge died in Highgate (north London) in 1834 at the age of 61. His remains are buried in the aisle of St Michael’s Church, Highgate. There’s a commemorative bust in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. The only other memorial to Coleridge in England is the massive statue of the Ancient Mariner looking out to sea from the harbor in Watchet, Somerset, which is said to be where Coleridge was inspired to write the famous poem.