Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (born October 21, 1772, Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, England died July 25, 1834, Highgate, near London), English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher. His Lyrical Ballads, written with William Wordsworth, heralded the English Romantic movement, and his Biographia Literaria (1817) is the most significant work of general literary criticism produced in the English Romantic period.
Coleridge’s father was vicar of Ottery and headmaster of the local grammar school. As a child Coleridge was already a prodigious reader, and he immersed himself to the point of morbid fascination in romances and Eastern tales such as The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. In