Unique Background Information

     One thing about Samuel Taylor Coleridge that interests me greatly is his peculiar background information. While enrolled at Cambridge University, Coleridge suffered from a disease known as rheumatic fever. This condition involves complications of the heart and can be very detrimental without proper medication. Coleridge was a victim to this disease, and it gave him problems for many years. Some believe that this “may have led to his addiction of opium, which probably began the same year he started college” (Holmes). The fact that this man had to suffer through a disease during his college outing might have been the reason that Coleridge was not very interested in the academia of his university. Instead, he occupied his time by reading the radical political thinking of Thomas Paine, William Godwin, and Voltaire. Most of the principles he read about included individual freedoms and individual rights, and this caused Coleridge to embrace the French Revolution. However, I found it more interesting that he soon began to scheme for the implementation of a utopia in America. In order to establish this new social order, Coleridge partnered with a poet named Robert Southey. He then married a girl named Sara Fricker, who was the sister of Southey’s fiancé. After many failed efforts, Coleridge soon realized that the policy of “equal rule for all” was not applicable in America and would be impossible to start. With the failing of this plan, Coleridge began to realize that he had married a woman that he did not love in the hopes of accomplishing his plan. Coleridge had very unique plans and mindsets, but I believe he began to think differently after giving up on his plan of establishing the new social order of a utopia.

Krueger, Christine, ed. "Coleridge, Samuel Taylor." Encyclopedia of British Writers, 19th Century,
       vol. 1. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2002. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.