Coleridge is generally recognized as a highly imaginative poet. Students are too prone therefore to regard his poetry as directly the product of his active imagination. It is the object of this study to show instead that his poetry is based largely upon his actual experiences. I have attempted to demonstrate this fact by giving supply the facts of Coleridge\u27s life, as fully in detail as I have been able to ascertain them, and by correlating them with certain references and materials in his poems. The selections have been grouped according to biographical chronology rather than sequences of composition, which often are not definitely known.
I have used Cottle\u27s Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey advisedly as a source. I realize that his references are faulty, but his work contains personal anecdotes in the life of Coleridge which are not to be found elsewhere
