The Complete Poems Read Online

1796

9 January–13 February Tour through Midlands to sell subscrip tions to The Watchman; meets Erasmus Darwin, the painter Joseph Wright of Derby.
1 March–13 May The Watchman published in ten numbers.
March Takes laudanum for two weeks to relieve a painful eye infection.
16 April Poems on Various Subjects published.
19 September Birth of first son, David Hartley. Reconciliation with Southey.
December Moves to Nether Stowey, Somerset, near Thomas Poole.
31 December ‘Ode on the Departing Year’ published in the Cambridge Intelligencer.

1797

March William Wordsworth visits STC at Stowey; the two have developed a close friendship.
June Visits William and Dorothy Wordsworth at Racedown, Dorset.
July The Wordsworths settle at Alfoxden House, near Stowey.
16 October Completes the drama Osorio, publishes a second edition of Poems, to which Are Now Added, Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd.
November Agrees to contribute regularly to the Morning Post, and publishes verse there including ‘The Visions of the Maid of Orleans’.
13–16 November STC and William Wordsworth take an extended walk to Lynton, plan and begin composition of the ‘Ancient Mariner’; these discussions form the germ of Lyrical Ballads.

1798

January Delivers Unitarian sermons at Shrewsbury, where he first meets William Hazlitt; accepts £150 annuity from the Wedgwood family.
March Completes ‘Ancient Mariner’, decides to go to Germany with the Wordsworths.
14 May Second son, Berkeley, is born.
18 September Lyrical Ballads is published, anonymously; STC and the Wordsworths sail to Hamburg on 19 September.

1799

April At the University of Göttingen; homesickness leads to extended bouts of drinking and opium-taking. Receives news that his infant son Berkeley has died.
29 July Returns to England and Stowey.
September-October Walking tour in Devon with Southey; meets Humphry Davy in Bristol.
26 October Meets Sara Hutchinson.
October-November First walking tour of the Lake District with Wordsworth.
10 November Receives offer from his friend Daniel Stuart, editor of the Morning Post, to work for the paper in London on full salary; arrives in London on 27 November, resumes friendship with Charles Lamb (an old school-friend from Christ’s Hospital), becomes friends with William Godwin.

1800

January-April Works as a reporter and leader-writer for the Morning Post; translates Schiller’s play Wallenstein (1797–9).
March STC’s wife Sara leaves London; STC lives at Pentonville with Lamb; offered a proprietary share in the Morning Post but declines.
April Visits the Wordsworths at Grasmere.
May-June Visit to Stowey and Bristol.
24 July Moves with his family to Greta Hall, Keswick.
14 September Third son, Derwent, is born.
September-October Oversees printing of the second edition of Lyrical Ballads.

1801

January Second edition of Lyrical Ballads published; extended illness.
21 January Returns to London, where he lives and works during most of this year.
July-August In Lake District; affection for Sara Hutchinson deepens.

1802

January After Christmas visit to Stowey, returns to London with Poole, under the care of Stuart.
March-November Returns to Lake District; severe tension between STC and his wife.
4 April Writes ‘A Letter to—[Sara Hutchinson]’, which is published in the Morning Post on 4 October as ‘Dejection: an Ode’. Late November Returns to London for three days, then takes a trip through South Wales with Tom and Sally Wedgwood.
23 December First daughter, Sara, is born.

1803

June A third edition of Poems is published. Visited at Greta Hall by Sir George and Lady Beaumont, Samuel Rogers, and William Hazlitt.
15–29 August Goes on a Scottish tour with William and Dorothy Wordsworth.
September-October First indication in notebooks of a plan ‘to write my metaphysical works, as my Life’.

1804

Health further deteriorates.
April Sails to Malta, where (from July) he serves as under-secretary to Alexander Hall, British High Commissioner.
August-November Goes to Sicily, where he stays with G. F. Leckie and makes two ascents of Mount Etna.

1805

January Appointed Acting Public Secretary in Malta.
September-December In Sicily again; visits Naples in December.

1806

January Visits Rome, where he meets Wilhelm von Humboldt, Ludwig Tieck, Friedrich Schlegel; later visits Florence, Pisa.
23 June Sails from Livorno for England, where he arrives on 17 August.
Late October Returns to Lake District, where he determines to separate from his wife; becomes disillusioned with and alienated from William Wordsworth and Sara Hutchinson.

1807

Late January At Coleorton, hears Wordsworth read The Prelude, writes ‘Lines to William Wordsworth’.
June Visits his family at Stowey.
August Meets Thomas De Quincey.
Autumn Returns to London.

1808

January-June Lives in rooms above The Courier office in the Strand (The Courier had been bought by Daniel Stuart in 1799). Lectures at Royal Institution on ‘Poetry and Principles of Taste’; frequently ill.
Late summer Returns to the Lake District.
November Publishes first prospectus for The Friend, a weekly periodical.

1809

Publishes The Friend.

1810

15 March Last number of The Friend is published.
October Goes to London intending to live with Basil Montagu, whose remarks about Wordsworth’s concern over this arrangement precipitate a serious estrangement between STC and Wordsworth. Lives instead with the family of John Morgan, a Unitarian and wealthy wine-shipper originally from Bristol; begins a long friendship with Henry Crabb Robinson.

1811

Continues to write for The Courier.
November Begins lectures on Shakespeare and Milton to the London Philosophical Society at Scot’s Corporation Hall.

1812

February-March Last journey to the Lake District.
May-August Lectures on drama in Willis’s Rooms, London. In May his quarrel with Wordsworth is ameliorated through Lamb and Crabb Robinson.
November Lectures on Shakespeare begin at Surrey Institution; half of the Wedgwood annuity is withdrawn. With Southey, publishes Omniana, a collection of miscellaneous prose and verse. Goes to Bristol to lecture; serious depression and illness.

1813

23 January Drama Remorse, a revision of the earlier Osorio, opens at Drury Lane.
October-November Lectures on Shakespeare and on education in Bristol.
December Serious illness.

1814

April Lectures in Bristol on Milton, Cervantes, and on Napoleon, and the French Revolution; under medical care for opium addiction and suicidal depression.
1 August Remorse performed in Bristol.
August-September Essays ‘On the Principles of Genial Criticism’ published in Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal. Moves with the Morgans to Calne, Wiltshire.

1815

Spring Living at Calne, STC plans to collect his poems with a new ‘preface’.
July-September ‘Preface’ to poems develops into ‘an Autobiogra-phia literaria, or Sketches of my literary Life & opinions, as far as Poetry and poetical Criticism is concerned’.
19 September Sends MS of Biographia Literaria to printer.
October Printing of BL begins, to be published together with Sibylline Leaves (1817).

1816

February Receives financial help from the Literary Fund and from Byron.
March Returns to London, ill.
April-May Owing to technical problems BL and 1817 are to be issued separately.
15 April Accepted as a patient and lodger by Dr and Mrs James Gillman, Highgate.
May-June Christabel volume is published.
July Further problems develop with the publishing of BL.
December Publishes Statesman’s Manual; or The Bible the Best Guide to Political Skill and Foresight, sharply criticized by Hazlitt in the Examiner and the Edinburgh Review.

1817

January-June Gale and Fenner, the new publishers of BL, ask STC for additional material for volume 2.
Summer Meets and becomes close friends with J. H. Green, young admirer.
July BL and 1817 are finally published.
November Drama Zapolya is published; visited by Ludwig Tieck in Highgate.

1817

January-June Gale and Fenner, the new publishers of BL, ask STC for additional material for volume 2.
Summer Meets and becomes close friends with J. H. Green, young admirer.
July BL and 1817 are finally published.
November Drama Zapolya is published; visited by Ludwig Tieck in Highgate.

1818

January ‘Treatise on Method’ appears in the Encyclopedia Metropolitana.
April Writes pamphlets supporting the bill against exploitation of child labour.
November Three-volume edition of The Friend is published. December Lectures alternately on the history of philosophy and on literature (until March 1819).

1819

March Rest Fenner, one of the publishers of BL, goes bankrupt, leaving STC with a serious loss.

1819

March Rest Fenner, one of the publishers of BL, goes bankrupt, leaving STC with a serious loss.
11 April Meets Keats.
14 April Hartley Coleridge elected Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford.

1820

March Again plans to write a magnum opus.
May Hartley Coleridge’s Oriel fellowship is not renewed.
October Derwent Coleridge enters St John’s College, Cambridge.

1821

July Visits his brother, the Rev. George Coleridge.
Autumn Refuses an invitation to lecture in Dublin.

1822

Spring Begins receiving visitors in Highgate and holding a ‘Thursday-evening class’ on philosophy.
November STC’s wife and daughter visit him in Highgate.
Late December Nephew H. N. Coleridge begins recording STC’s
Table Talk; Derwent Coleridge leaves Cambridge suddenly.

1823

December The Gillmans move to 3 The Grove, Highgate, adding a new attic study for STC.

1824

March Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature with an annuity of £100.
June Visited by Thomas Carlyle and Dante Gabriel Rossetti in Highgate. Derwent Coleridge returns to Cambridge and receives his BA.

1825

May Publishes Aids to Reflection.
18 May Delivers the Royal Society of Literature lecture ‘On the Prometheus of Aeschylus’.

1827

May Becomes seriously ill; visit from his old friend Thomas Poole. Derwent Coleridge marries Mary Pridham. Sir George Beaumont dies, leaving STC’s wife £100.

1828

22 April STC receives a visit from James Fenimore Cooper.
21 June–7 August Rhine tour with William Wordsworth and his daughter Dora.
June-July Publishes Poetical Works in three volumes.

1829

May Publishes a second edition of Poetical Works.
Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats issued by Galignani in Paris.
3 September Daughter Sara marries her cousin, H. N. Coleridge. December On the Constitution of Church and State published.

1830

June Sara and H. N. Coleridge settle near STC in Hampstead. July Makes his will.

1831

Last meetings between STC and Wordsworth.

1832

Receives a legacy of £300 from Adam Steinmetz.

1833

Hartley Coleridge publishes Poems, dedicated to STC.
24May–g June Visits Cambridge for a meeting of the British Association.
5 August Receives a visit from Ralph Waldo Emerson in Highgate.

1834

March-July Works on a third edition of the Poetical Works with the assistance of H.