Coleridge - Poetry And Prose

Coleridge – Poetry and Prose (1951)
Edited by H. W. Garrod | Oxford at the Clarendon Press
ISBN: none (filed under “Romantic” rather than “metadata”)
Condition: Good as sold by Crappy Old Books

Here he is: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the man who gave the world:

• Albatross-based guilt,

• Frost at midnight,

• And more unfinished projects than you can shake a laudanum bottle at.

This 1951 Clarendon Press volume, edited by H. W. Garrod, is your one-stop, respectably bound portal into both Coleridge the poet and Coleridge the talker-who-accidentally-wrote-essays.

What’s inside (besides mist and metaphysics)

You get a carefully chosen mixture of:

• Poetry – the hits and the deep cuts:

  • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (guilt, sea, bird, consequences).

  • Kubla Khan (the most famous fragment in English literature, plus the greatest “sorry, someone knocked on the door” excuse in literary history).

  • Christabel and other atmospheric pieces that hover somewhere between ballad, dream and ghost story.

  • Shorter lyrics that prove he could, when he felt like it, actually finish things.

• Prose – selections from his letters, notebooks and criticism:

  • Opinions on poetry, philosophy and just about everything else.

  • Bits where he attempts to explain what he’s doing and somehow becomes more mysterious.

  • Glimpses of the brilliant, maddening conversationalist who kept friends, editors and himself permanently exhausted.

Garrod has done the hard work of choosing and tidying; you get Coleridge distilled rather than Coleridge in sprawling, chaotic first draft.

The tone & editor

H. W. Garrod is very much Oxford 1951:

• Sober, exact, mildly stern.

• Provides introduction and notes that say, in effect, “Yes, this is all a bit much; here is how to cope.”

• Treats Coleridge as both a great poet and a full-time problem – which is correct.

This isn’t a fluffy “selected poems for schools”; it’s a proper Clarendon selection, designed for people who might actually care about what the man meant.

This particular copy

From the photo:

• Classic dark blue cloth of the Clarendon Press, no dust jacket, radiating “I belong in a serious library”.

• Condition: Good – in Crappy Old Books terms:

  • Binding sound, hinges fine, pages all exactly where Coleridge left them.

  • Corners and spine ends just gently rubbed, like a tutor’s elbows on a tutorial table.

  • Boards with a few small scuffs and specks from years of civilized handling, not battlefield trauma.

Inside, expect:

• Clean, readable text

• 1950s paper with that faint ivory tone that makes everything feel a bit more important.

No tragic underlining saga reported, so you’re free to be the first to argue with Coleridge in the margins.

Why you might actually want this

• You love Romantic poetry but don’t fancy hauling around a doorstop Complete Works.

• You want both the poems and the prose, to see how the same mind could produce the Ancient Mariner and pages of dense, fascinating criticism.

• You’re the sort of person who thinks a slim blue Oxford volume on the shelf makes a room 15% more intelligent.

• You secretly like the idea of reading Coleridge in an edition that smells faintly of lost libraries and pipe smoke (not guaranteed, but strongly implied).

It’s also perfect for dipping:

• One night: a poem or two.

• Another night: a page of prose where Coleridge invents modern literary theory between bouts of ill health.

The vibe

Reading Coleridge – Poetry and Prose in this edition feels like:

• Sitting in a slightly chilly study while someone says, “Let’s start with the Mariner, shall we?” and hands you the good copy.

• Discovering that the man behind the famous poems was simultaneously:

  • brilliant,

  • annoying,

  • and incapable of writing a boring sentence.

• Feeling a tiny bit guilty every time you half-finish something, then remembering you’ll never out-Coleridge Coleridge on that front.

Condition vs. Coleridge

• Physically: Good – sturdy, sensible, quietly confident; everything Coleridge himself was not.

• Literarily: rich, strange, essential Romanticism in a compact, serious package.

Offered by Crappy Old Books, where the bindings are blue, the condition is Good, and the albatross remains strictly metaphorical unless you start taking this on sea voyages.

Keep browsing: See more Poetry books Other books by HW Garrod