Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772-1804: 01 - Softcover

Holmes, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375705406 ISBN 13: 9780375705403

Publisher: Pantheon Books, 1999

Synopsis

Winner of the 1989 Whitbread Prize for Book of the Year, this is the first volume of Holmes's seminal two-part examination of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of Britain's greatest poets.

Coleridge: Early Visions is the first part of Holmes's classic biography of Coleridge that forever transformed our view of the poet of 'Kubla Khan' and his place in the Romantic Movement. Dismissed by much recent scholarship as an opium addict, plagiarist, political apostate and mystic charlatan, Richard Holmes's Coleridge leaps out of the page as a brilliant, animated and endlessly provoking figure who invades the imagination. This is an act of biographical recreation which brings back to life Coleridge's poetry and encyclopaedic thought, his creative energy and physical presence. He is vivid and unexpected. Holmes draws the reader into the labyrinthine complications of his subject's personality and literary power, and faces us with profound questions about the nature of creativity, the relations between sexuality and friendship, the shifting grounds of political and religious belief.

About this title

Review:

"Poet, journalist, letter-writer, critic, autobiographer, lecturer, folklorist, philosopher: when a man's genius is so amorphous and protean, how can any one biographer hope to encompass it? Yet, miraculously, in this first of two volumes, Richard Holmes has succeeded in doing so . . . His masterly book leaves one feeling that, if there were a single literary giant of the past, other than Shakespeare, whom one was permitted to meet, then Coleridge would be the choice."
--Francis King, Evening Standard (London)

"The best literary biography since Ellmann's Oscar Wilde."
--John Mortimer, Sunday Times (London)

"Dazzling . . . Here is Coleridge, attractive and repellant, with all his seductive contradictions: the young man with his mountainous aspirations, his dreaminess . . . yammering poetry, pounding the turnpikes, dominating drawing-rooms; the foaming genius, messy with metaphysical secretions and uncontrollable speculations. Holmes has not merely reinterpreted Coleridge, he has re-created him, and his biography has the aura of fiction, the shimmer of an authentic portrait. [This is] a biography like few I have ever read."
--James Wood, The Guardian (London)

From the Publisher:

some excerpts from the British reviews:
‘Coleridge lives and talks and loves... in these pages as never before.’ MICHAEL FOOT, Independent

‘A deeply moving life of a troubled genius. Holmes has fashioned a compelling narrative which inspires considerable affection and respect for Coleridge. This stimulating book is one of the most enjoyable biographies I have read.’ MICHAEL SHELDEN, Daily Telegraph

‘If Coleridge does not leap out of these pages – brilliant, animated, endlessly provoking – and invade your imagination (as he has done mine), then I have failed to do him justice’ Richard Holmes has pursued his subject from the archives of the British Museum to the potholes of Devon and the peaks of the Hartz Mountains. This first (Whitbread prize-winning) volume of his biography transforms our view of the poet of ‘Kubla Khan’, best friend to Wordsworth, forever. Holmes brings back to life not only Coleridge’s poetry and his encyclopaedic thought, but also all his creative energy and physical presence, the very sound of his voice, his fantastic mixture of stormy ebullience and anxious self-doubt. The Romantic writer who emerges is an unforgettably vivid and unexpected figure. Coleridge: Early Visions offers a true portrait of unfolding genius, one that will echo in your mind, long after closing the book.

‘As an act of biographical re-creation, with the ghost of Coleridge hovering over the pages it seems to me nothing short of a masterpiece.’ IAN THOMPSON, Listener

‘Beautifully written and sympathetic... Holmes’ book adds to our sense of Coleridge’s greatnes, is informed by love and humour as well as research; and rises to a climax of narrative writing in the last chapters, in which you feel he has reached into the soul of his subject as every biographer hopes to, but few actually do.’ CLAIRE TOMALIN, Observer

‘Dazzling... Holmes has not merely reinterpreted Coleridge; he has recreated him, and his biography has the aura of fiction, the shimmer of an authentic portrait... a biography like few I have ever read.’ JAMES WOOD, Guardian

‘The first volume makes one impatient for the second. Holmes writes with wry empathy and sure scholarship of his wayward hero.’ GEORGE STEINER, Sunday Times, Books of the Year

About this edition

• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0375705406
• ISBN 13: 9780375705403
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448