Few writers in English can claim so diverse a genius as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Author of some of the best known poems in the language and Wordsworth's collaborator in Lyrical Ballads, he was also a profound critic, a philosopher, a political commentator, a psychologist, a nature writer, an autobiographer, and the greatest talker of his age. Illustrated throughout with contemporary images, this book follows him from childhood in Devon and schooldays in London, to his days in the Lake District and Malta, and through to his final years in Highgate, bringing to life one of the most extraordinary figures of the Romantic age.