Coleridge biographia literaria

Autobiography by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Biographia Literaria is a critical autobiography by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published in 1817 in two volumes. Its working title was 'Autobiographia Literaria'.

The formative influences on the work were William Wordsworth's theory of poetry, the Kantian view of imagination as a shaping power (for which Coleridge later coined the neologism "esemplastic"), various post-Kantian writers including F.

W. J. von Schelling, and the earlier influences of the empiricist school, including David Hartley and the Associationist psychology.

Structure and tone

The work is long and seemingly loosely structured, and although there are autobiographical elements, it is not a straightforward or linear autobiography.

Its subtitle, 'Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions', alludes to The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne, suggesting that the formal qualities of the Biographia