Samuel Taylor Coleridge is author of some of the best-known verse in theEnglish language - ‘Kubla Khan’, ‘The Ancient Mariner’, ‘Christabel’, ‘Frostat Midnight’ - and, with Wordsworth, co-author of Lyrical Ballads, one of themost momentous collaborations in English poetry. One of England‘s mostdazzling literary critics,Coleridge was also a profound theorist of the imagina-tion, as well as philosopher, theologian, activist and political commentator,psychologist, journalist, nature-writer, autobiographer - and the greatesttalker of his age.However, for all his extraordinary achievements, Coleridge never lost aburden of lonely inadequacy, sometimes deepening to the terrible isolationand despair to which ’The Ancient Mariner‘ bears witness. At the same time,few writers have responded to their experience of the world with more spon-taneous love and delight. Instinctively solitary yet needily dependent,passionately emotional yet intensely cerebral, exuberant yet melancholy,Coleridge is unique: ’Never saw I his likeness,‘ wrote Charles Lamb, ’norprobably the world can see again.‘Illustrated throughout with contemporary images, documents and leavesfrom Coleridge’s remarkable notebooks, Seamus Perry‘s concise biographybrings to life the genius of this fascinating, contradictory and extraordinaryfigure.