“Not the poem which we have read, but that to which we return, with the…” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Not the poem which we have read, but that to which we return, with the greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine power, and claims the name of essential poetry.”

Defining the test of genuine poetry by the desire to re-read it · Biographia Literaria, Chapter I

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

About Samuel Taylor Coleridge

21 October 1772–25 July 1834

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in Ottery St Mary, Devon, and died on 25 July 1834 at Highgate, near London. He occupies an unusual and commanding place in English literary history: he was at once one of the makers of Romantic poetry, a revolutionary critic of Shakespeare and poetic language, a…

More by Samuel Taylor Coleridge