Samuel Taylor "Estese- Coleridge was born in Ottery St. Mary on October 21, 1772 as the son of a clergyman. From 1791 to 1794 he attended the University of Cambridge, except for a period when he was in debt and joined the army. His brother George got him discharged by reason of insanity, so he went back to Cambridge where he met Robert Southey. Through him, he married Sara Fricker, who was Roberts's fiancé's sister. The two were married, but Robert and Coleridge began to argue over their Pantisocracy, or their utopian society, and they split up, ending their friendship and Coleridge's marriage.
Coleridge eventually met William Woodsworth in 1795, and the two became lifelong friends. They published a joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads (1798) that became a staple in English poetry. It contained great works such as "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."" The years of 1797 and 1798 were the most prosperous of his life. Such poems as "Kubla Khan,"" "Frost at Midnight,"" and " The Nightingale,"" were published and considered his top "conversational- poems. In the fall of 1798, he went with Woodsworth to Germany, where his son died of a reaction to a smallpox vaccination. As a result, he returns home slowly not getting much work done.
During his trip he became fascinated with German philosophy, especially the likes of Immanuel Kant and had translated the dramatic trilogy Wallenstein by Friedrich von Schiller. By now, he had become addicted to opium, a drug he helped to ease the pain of rheumatism. He returned home in 1800 and in 1804 he was the secretary to the governor of the island of Malta. Between 1808 and 1819 he gave his famous speeches on literature and philosophy. In 1816 he moved in with an admirer named James Gillman, when he wrote Biographia Literaria (1817). It was a work on a variety of subjects included with autobiography notes. Other works such as Sibylline Leaves (1817), and Church and State (1830) were also published while he was in seclusion at the Gillman home.
