Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan", as well as the major prose work "Biographia Literaria". His critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He had a major
To Southey Coleridge's feelings towards William Godwin after writing "To Godwin", Coleridge began to intellectually separate from Southey after "To Southey", and, during his lecture series in 1795, he began to stress Christianity as essential to his political beliefs. However, even within the poem, there is no direct reference to Southey's liberal political beliefs. Instead, the poem only discusses Southey as a poet. A side effect from not including the sonnet in the 1796 series is that Coleridge effectively removed the only sonnet about a contemporary poet from the series. To Southey "To Southey" or "To Robert Southey" was written by Samuel