This book examines how Coleridge staged his private woes in the public space of the newspaper.
It looks at his publications in the Morning Post which first published one of his most famous
poems Dejection. An Ode. It reveals how he found a socially sanctioned public outlet for
poetic disappointments and personal frustrations which he could not possibly articulate in any
other way. Featuring fresh contextual readings of established major poems original readings
of epigrams sentimental ballads and translations analyses of political and human-interest
stories this book reveals the remarkable extent to which Coleridge used the public medium of
the newspaper to divulge his complex and ambivalent private emotions about his marriage his
relationship with the Wordsworths and the Hutchinsons and the effect of these dynamics on his
own poetry and poetics.
