Timeline

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge Family Tree

Sarah Platt, Rosemary Coleridge Middleton's daughter, has sent me a Coleridge family tree. I have reconstructed it as an A3-size PDF. If you reduce the size in your print settings to A4, it is perfectly legible.

Click here for the PDF.

Terence Sackett

Timeline (With grateful thanks to Seamus Perry)

1772 Samuel Taylor Coleridge born on 21 October at Ottery St Mary, Devon.

1778 Joins Ottery Grammar School.

1781 Death of Coleridge's father.

1782 Enters Christ's Hospital.

1788 Made a Grecian (top scholar) at Christ's Hospital.

1789 The fall of the Bastille in Paris.

1791 Enters Jesus College, Cambridge.

1792 Wins the Browne Medal for a Greek Ode on 'the Slave Trade'.

1793 Attends trial of William Frend; enlists in 15th Light Dragoons as Silas Tomkyn Comberbache.

Sara Fricker1794 Returns to Cambridge; meets Robert Southey and plans Pantisocracy (June); engaged to Sara Fricker (August); The Fall of Robespierre (written with Southey) published (September); leaves Cambridge without degree, and stays in London with Charles Lamb (December); begins Religious Musings (Christmas Eve).

1795 Returns to Bristol; lectures published on politics and religion; Pantisocracy abandoned after Southey withdraws; first meeting with William Wordsworth (September) at the Pinney’s house in Great George Street; marries Sara Fricker (4 October) and moves to Clevedon; writes The Eolian Harp (August-October).

1796 Tours Midlands to publicise The Watchman (ten issues March-May); Poems on Various Subjects published (April); Hartley Coleridge born (September); moves to Nether Stowey, Somerset with family.

1797 Friendship with Tom Poole. Assciation with Worthworth develops; William and Dorothy Wordsworth, and Charles and Mary Lamb, stay at Stowey; Coleridge writes This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison; Wordsworths move to Alfoxden, near Stowey; Coleridge publishes a second edition of ‘Poems’; writes Kubla Khan and Part One of Christabel; attempts at collaboration with Wordsworth fail and Coleridge begins The Ancient Mariner; works for the 'Morning Post'.

1798 Accepts Wedgwood annuity; Berkeley born (May); finishes The Ancient Mariner; writes Frost at Midnight, France: An Ode, and Fears in Solitude – published as a book later in the year; Lyrical Ballads (co-authored with Wordsworth) published, containing The Ancient Mariner; travels to Germany with the Wordsworths and Wordsworth begins The Prelude, the Poem to Coleridge.

1799 The Wordsworths return to England while Coleridge studies in Göttingen; Berkeley dies (February); Coleridge returns July); visits the Lakes with Wordsworth (autumn), and falls in love with Sara Hutchinson; travels to London (November).

Greta Hall1800 Works as a successful journalist on the 'Morning Post' (January-April); moves into Greta Hall, Keswick (July); Derwent born (September); Part Two of Christabel written but not finished, and the poem is dropped from the next edition of Lyrical Ballads.

1801 Second edition of Lyrical Ballads (‘1800’) published under Wordsworth's name, with a new ‘Preface’, at least partly the fruit of Coleridge’s thinking; Coleridge in London writing for the 'Morning Post' (end of the year).

1802 Returns north hearing Sara Hutchinson is ill; writes Letter to Sara Hutchinson; Dejection: An Ode (a version of ‘Letter’) published in the 'Morning Post' on his wedding anniversary (and Wordsworth's wedding day); Sara Coleridge born (23 December).

1803 Increasingly sick; publishes a third edition of Poems; begins a tour of Scotland with the Wordsworths.

1804 Travels to Malta (April); appointed secretary to Governor.

1805 John Wordsworth dies at sea.

1806 Visits Rome; returns to England and is back at Greta in October; decides to separate from Mrs Coleridge.

1807 Coleridge and Hartley at Coleorton with the Wordsworths; Wordsworth recites
The Prelude, and Coleridge writes To William Wordsworth in response; moves to London (November).

1808 Lodges at the 'Courier' office; lectures at the Royal Institution on poetry; moves to Grasmere (September) and stays with the Wordsworths at Allan Bank.

1809 Publishes a periodical, The Friend, June 1809-March 1810, working with Sara Hutchinson.

1810 Travels to London with Basil Montagu, who passes on Wordsworth's disparaging remarks; lives with the Morgans in Hammersmith.

1811 Lectures (November 1811-January 1812) about Shakespeare and Milton.

1812 Last brief visit to the Lakes, returning to London in March; reissues The Friend, lectures on Shakespeare and Milton again (November 1812-January 1813).

1813 Remorse plays at the Drury Lane theatre (January); moves to Bristol following Morgan’s bankruptcy and lectures on Shakespeare and Milton; taken seriously ill.

1814 Lectures in Bristol again; moves to Ashley, Wiltshire, and moves in with the Morgans in Calne (December).

1815 Dictates Biographia Literaria to Morgan, and prepares Sibylline Leaves for press.

1816 Moves into Moreton House, Highgate on 15 April, and lives there with the Gillmans who accept him as a house patient

Coleridge's room in the Gillmans' house at HighgateMoves with the Gillmans in autumn to The Grove, Highgate. Christabel, Kubla Khan and The Pains of Sleep published in a volume by John Murray. The first of three projected Lay Sermons published.

1817 The second Lay Sermon; Biographia Literaria, and Sibylline Leaves published.

1818 Treatise on Method published; further literary lectures; prepares a revised edition of The Friend; lectures on the history of philosophy, and gives his last series of lectures on literature (ending March 1819).

1819 Meets Keats in Millfield Lane, Highgate in April. Hartley Coleridge is elected a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford.

1820 Hartley loses his Fellowship.

1825 Publishes Aids to Reflection, and lectures to the Royal Society of Literature On the Prometheus of Aeschylus.

1828 Publishes his Poetical Works (3 vols.); a second edition follows in 1829; goes on a European tour with Wordsworth and Wordsworth's daughter Dora.

1830 Publishes On the Constitution of the Church and State.

1834 Coleridge dies, 25 July.

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