Hartley Coleridge and the Muscular Christians

Abstract

Hartley Coleridge, the eldest and favourite child of ST Coleridge is the subject of Chapter 7. Here, I situate my argument in the midst of contemporary critical endeavours to revitalise interest in this somewhat ill-fated and marginalised literary figure. But rather than dwell on the rights and wrongs of Hartley’s upbringing, I instead turn to an aspect of his life that has received less critical attention: his disastrous career at Oriel College, Oxford. Instead of laying responsibility solely at Hartley’s feet (or those of his father), I situate Hartley at a pivotal moment in the college’s history, as ongoing reforms were in process to inculcate a new male subject, undergirded by rigidifying codes of Christian manliness. These, I illustrate, were the roots of the Victorian movement that came to be known as ‘Muscular Christianity’, which came to have a similarly deleterious effect on Lewis Carroll, while later being embraced by the scoutmaster Baden-Powell.