Sara Coleridge the "Essays on his Own Times, by S. T. Coleridge", and the Introduction to the "Biographia Literaria". In 1850, Coleridge discovered a lump in her breast. Her physician decided not to operate, prescribing cod liver oil and opium. Knowing there was no cure, she waited for the disease to take its course. "I live in constant fear," Coleridge wrote, "like the Ancient Mariner with the Albatross hung about his neck, I have a weight always upon me." Shortly before she died she amused herself by writing a little autobiography for her daughter. This, which reaches only to her ninth year,
Christabel (poem) becomes enchanted with Geraldine, ordering a grand procession to announce her rescue. The unfinished poem ends here. It is unclear when Coleridge began writing the poem which would become "Christabel". Presumably, he prepared it beginning in 1797. During this time, he had been working on several poems for "Lyrical Ballads", a book on which he collaborated with William Wordsworth. "Christabel" was not complete in time for the book's 1798 publication, though it did include "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". The first part of the poem was likely completed that year, however. He continued to work on Part II of