Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Born on October the 21st, 1772, in Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire; died on July the 25th, 1834, in Highgate, near London.
Poet, philosopher and critic, Coleridge stands as an influential figure of his time. William Hazlitt wrote that 'his thoughts did not seem to come with labour and effort; but as if borne on the gusts of genius, and as if the wings of his imagination lifted him from off his feet', and William Wordsworth called him 'the only wonderful man I ever knew'. His 'Lyrical Ballads', written with Wordsworth, heralded the English Romantic Movement, and his 'Biographia Literaria' (1817) is the most significant work of general literary criticism produced in the English Romantic period. Although Coleridge's poetic achievement was small in quantity, his metaphysical anxiety, anticipating modern existentialism, has gained him reputation as an authentic visionary.
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