Chronically impoverished, tormented by self-doubt and a crippling addiction to opium, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) still managed to become one of the most versatile and influential forces of English romanticism.

The Portable Coleridge faithfully represents all facets of this complex, haunted genius, including his poems, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Christabel," "Kubla Khan," and "Dejection"; letters to friends and colleagues such as Robert Southey and William Godwin; selections from Notebooks and Table Talk; political and philisophical writings; literary criticism; and extensive excerpts from Biographia Literaria, in which Coleridge interweaves aesthetics, metaphysics, and disarmingly candid autobiography. Edited and with an introduction by the critic I.A. Richards, this voulme vastly expands our understanding of a writer of visionary insight and protean range.