Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in 1772 in a small village, Ottery St. Mary, in Devon. He went to school in London and then on to Cambridge University.

As well as being amongst the great figures of English poetry, Coleridge also found fame as a public lecturer and philosopher. His wide ranging interests included journalism, literary criticism, theology and science.

In his early life he was full of energy and enthusiasms. Passionate, charming and impetuous, he swept almost everyone he met along in schemes and ideas. It is in this atmosphere of excitement and collaboration that his friendship with the Wordsworths was established.

In 1800 Coleridge moved with his family to Keswick, in the Lake District. He was a frequent visitor to Dove Cottage and appears regularly in Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal in a variety of guises poet, planner, walker talker, gardener, invalid: a cause for both hope and concern.

His time in the Lake District was blighted by increasing addiction to opium and a marriage that was becoming ever more unhappy and acrimonious. To add to his problems, he became infatuated with Sara Hutchinson, the sister of Wordsworth's wife Mary.

Over the years Coleridge s close relationship with Wordsworth became strained and there was an argument, with bitter recriminations, in 1810. The two poets were reconciled in 1812, but the highpoint of their friendship was over. His later life was spent mainly in London, where he continued to be much in demand for his powers of conversation. He died in July 1834 and is buried in Highgate Cemetery, London.