Coleridge's influences

     One thing that intrigued me about Samuel Taylor Coleridge was that he had several mentors or people that he partnered with during his lifetime.  His background consists of several influential people who had an effect on the way Coleridge thought and wrote. His first major influence was in grade school, and his name was Charles Lamb. Lam was a schoolmate and lifelong friend, and he wrote an essay that gives us a vivid sketch of Coleridge’s loneliness, his learning and his eloquence.  Later on, he met Robert Southey who was a radical in religion and politics which had a huge effect on Coleridge because he ended up partnering with Southey in an attempt to recreate American government in the form of a pantisocracy, or equal rule by all. After moving on from Southey’s radical beliefs, he met William Wordsworth who he considered the best poet of the age. Coleridge and Wordsworth began working together and influenced each other’s poems greatly, even combing their works to create a collection called lyrical ballads in 1798. There were also people who were not mentors that influenced Coleridge such as his wife, Sarah Fricker, and his love, Sara Hutchinson. Both girls had an effect on Coleridge because they played a large role in his everyday life. Since Romanticism is greatly based off of personal experiences, the presence of Fricker and Hutchinson in his life must have influenced many of his poems.  One man who had a huge influence on Coleridge later on in his life was a man named Edmund Burke because he greatly shifted Coleridge’s views to conservative, and Coleridge began writing with a much greater emphasis on conservatism. All of these people influenced Coleridge significantly, and it has helped me to understand why Coleridge wrote the way he did.

The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt et al. Vol A. New York, NY: W.W. Norton& Company, Inc., 2006. 1609-1611. Print.