Biographia literaria

1817 · Book · Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“IT has been my lot to have had my name introduced, both in conversation and in print, more frequently than I find it easy to explain, whether I consider the fewness, unimportance, and limited circulation of my writings, or the retirement and distance in which I have lived, both from the literary and political world.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 1817 work Biographia Literaria is an autobiography in discourse; loosely structured and non-linear, the work is meditative and contains numerous philosophical essays. Initially criticized as the product of Coleridge's opiate-driven descent into illness, more recent critics have given the work far more credit and recognition. The book is the origin of the well-known critical idea of "willing suspension of disbelief." by Samuel Taylor Coleridge