Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834) is largely remembered as the Romantic poet who gave the world ‘Kubla Khan’, yet he was also a profound religious and political thinker. He understood the moral and spiritual dimensions of politics, and saw the Bible as an invaluable guide to social action. Eschewing traditional religious orthodoxy, though deeply committed to his own spiritual quest, he posed many questions which were shocking in his day but are now at the heart of theological debate.

The son of a country vicar, Coleridge spent several years at Cambridge before meeting William Wordsworth in 1795, when his genius as a poet came into its own. In 1794 he married Sara Fricker, an unhappy union which lasted until 1802. He then entered a long period of depression and poor health induced by opium addiction. In his last years he lived peacefully with the Highgate doctor James Gillman and his wife. He wrote little poetry at this time and was concerned solely with religion and politics, seeking a vision to unify human life.