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Автор Richard Holmes

Coleridge

Early Visions

Richard Holmes

Harper Perennial

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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Hammersmith

London W6 8JB

This edition published by Harper Perennial 2005

First published in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton 1989

Copyright © Richard Holmes 1989

Richard Holmes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007204571

Ebook Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 9780007378838

Version: 2014-09-15

To Vicki

Table of Contents

Anyone who presumes to write about Coleridge runs the grave risk of sounding like the person on business from Porlock, a prosaic interrupter of marvels.

But some years ago, I suggested (anonymously) in The Oxford Companion to English Literature that Coleridge’s best work, “both poetry and prose, has the inescapable glow of the authentic visionary”. This biography has become my attempt to substantiate that wild claim, and to show what sort of visionary Coleridge really was, and why – among all the English Romantics – he is worth rediscovering today.