Overview

This book provides a critical and biographical account of the fascinating hand-made book of rector William Greswell (1848-1923), in which he assembled British and American reviews and accounts of the Romantic poet, critic, philosopher, and religious thinker Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). J.C.C. Mays re-evaluates Coleridge’s nineteenth-century reputation through the lens provided by Greswell’s workbook. Mays demonstrates how Coleridge is one of the most complicated and influential religious thinkers of the nineteenth century, whose “religious musings” (most prominently as published in Aids to Reflection and On the Constitution of the Church and State, but also in posthumous collections such as Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit) cast a long shadow over religious thinking in nineteenth-century England and America. Although Greswell was but one of Coleridge’s many readers in the nineteenth century, his engagement with Coleridge’s writings was noteworthyfor the sheer mass of the materials he assembled, and the breadth of the Coleridge he depicts. Greswell’s Coleridge is a Coleridge in whom all Coleridgeans will be interested.

Full Product Details

9783031399671

Table of Contents

Reviews

“I enjoyed winding my way with Jim Mays for a couple of days through one of the more obscure byways of Somerset and its Coleridge connections. Mays, as one of our most senior Coleridgeans, is a well-informed guide … . It must be said that Mays’ book is at once both interesting and maddening, a miscellany almost as broad as the album … .” (Nicholas Reid, The Coleridge Bulletin, Vol. 63, 2024)

Author Information

J.C.C. Mays is Professor Emeritus of English and American Literature at University College Dublin, Ireland. He is the author of numerous works on Coleridge, including Coleridge's Dejection Ode (Palgrave, 2019) and Coleridge's Ancient Mariner (Palgrave, 2016).

Tab Content 6

Countries Available