Biographia Literaria

About the book

Coleridge begins from recollections of his reading, education, early writing, and encounters with criticism, then moves into arguments about the mind and the activity of making poetry. His distinction between imagination and fancy belongs to a broader engagement with philosophical accounts of perception and thought. The discussion of Wordsworth and the Lyrical Ballads gives these questions a sustained literary application, including disagreements about language and the characteristics of poetic achievement. The work's changing forms are part of its challenge: memoir, polemic, abstract argument, and close criticism do not remain neatly separated. Readers follow a thinker trying to explain the principles underlying judgments that experience has already taught him to make. The book rewards patient attention to how a general claim changes when brought back to a particular poem or verbal choice.

• Imagination
• Literary judgment
• Mind and language

Why read it

For a major work of literary reflection that tests ideas about imagination through autobiography, philosophy, and arguments with other poets.

Literary autobiography and criticism · English text