Coleridge and the Romantic Newspaper: The ‘Morning Post’ and the Road to ‘Dejection’ by Heidi Thomson

Abstract

 Reviews covering a vast range of issues relating to textual variants, subtextual meanings, cultural legacies, and historical contexts. Pittock describes the Museum as a ‘monument to the musical and generic fusion culture of eighteenth-century Scotland’ (, ); this edition might equally be described as a monumental contribution to the study of Burns and Scottish music, whose influence will be felt for decades to come. U  L A B Coleridge and the Romantic Newspaper: e ‘Morning Post’ and the Road to ‘Dejection ’. by H T. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. . xii+.£.. ISBN ––––. In the first few pages of Coleridge and the Romantic Newspaper, Heidi omson poses the question ‘why, you may well ask, another book inspired by “Dejection”?’ (p. ), which one might supplement by asking whether we need another book about Coleridge and Wordsworth and, more specifically, the protracted collapse of their friendship, founded largely in mutual disillusionment and played out with the publication of the second edition of Lyrical Ballads; her answer is simple: ‘because I wanted to find out more about Coleridge’s compulsive expression of what could be considered private matters’ (p. ). Accordingly, this book focuses on just a few years of Coleridge’s life—–—during his ‘intense involvement with the Morning Post’ as a way of ‘unlocking his personal and poetic interests’ in a study that is primarily biographical, but also ‘textual and contextual’ (p. ). e results are surprising and persuasive, and throughout her book, omson provides sustained and illuminated readings of largely neglected pieces, excavates Coleridge’s complex and ever shiing state of mind (in part produced by his infatuation or limerent devotion to Sara Hutchinson and his compromised feelings towards his wife, whom he admired as a mother but struggled to adore as a lover), and also exposes and explores his friendship with Mary Robinson. Biography and creativity are seen to be interwoven to the point of co-dependency—which is, perhaps, on the face of it, an obvious point to make; but the book unpicks and unpacks the intricacies of their self-involvement in a consistently compelling way. omson examines Coleridge’s ‘reluctant, painful realization’ that ‘neither Wordsworth nor Sara Hutchinson were as obsessed with Coleridge as he was with them’ and his ‘need to publicize it’ (p. ). She further reveals that ‘his ideas about poets and poetry were to a surprising degree associated with his frustrated expectations of domestic happiness’ (p. ). In assessing how he publicized these frustrations, she presents a Coleridge who always needed to have the last word. e second chapter (aer the Introduction) sets the scene for what follows, examines Coleridge’s return from Germany in July , discusses how ‘the two most important relationships’ in his life—his marriage to Sara Fricker and his friendship with Wordsworth—‘came to a watershed’ (pp. , ), and considers his love of the North (geography being an important theme in the book: Coleridge was always MLR, .,   concerned with his proximity to those who were in—or moving out of—his life). e third discusses Coleridge’s work at the Morning Post and devotes considerable space to a prolonged assessment of the largely neglected poem ‘Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie’ (later retitled ‘Love’), considering it in relation to ‘e Eolian Harp’, ‘To William Wordsworth’, and ‘Lewti’. e fourth considers Coleridge’s ‘Ode to Georgiana’ (the Duchess of Devonshire) and his fascinating essay on Pitt, which reveals much of Coleridge’s talent for astute insight. Aer this Coleridge leaves London and heads north to Greta Hall. omson traces the origin of the depression that would be immortalized in ‘Dejection’ from this period, combining newspaper pieces with letters and notebook entries to build up a full picture of his mental and emotional state. e next two chapters focus on Coleridge’s surprisingly close relationship to Mary Robinson and how it complicated the Coleridge/Wordsworth paradigm. e penultimate chapter contextualizes ‘Dejection’ in relation to ‘lesser known poems and texts which were published at about the same time in the Morning Post’ (p. ). e conclusion concentrates on the differences between the April and October versions of ‘Dejection’, and claims that ‘the poem that Coleridge published in the Morning Post is just as much both...