The Regions of Sara Coleridge's Thought Selected Literary Criticism

Sara Coleridge (1802-52) was one of the most brilliant and erudite critics of the early Victorian period.The Regions of Sara Coleridge's Thoughtreveals her critical intelligence and theoretical reach. This study shows her in various critical guises: editing works by her father Samuel Taylor Coleridge, commenting on her own poetry and prose, and writing diversely impressive and lively criticism of classical and English literature. As her biographer E.L. Griggs said, her literary criticism forms 'a remarkable commentary on her generation.' This book makes her commentary on books and writers available for the first time, substantially representing her literary discussions from various unpublished and newly edited manuscript sources. Peter Swaab's scholarly introduction places Sara Coleridge in her literary, intellectual, and historical context, and evokes her exceptional qualities as a writer and critic.

Peter Swaab is a reader in English at the University College London. He is the editor of Sara Coleridge's Collected Poems; Lives of the Great Romantics: Wordsworth; and Edward Lear's Selected Nonsense and Travel Writings. He has also written a book on Bringing Up Baby in Palgrave Macmillan's BFI Film Classics series.

'Sara Coleridge, like Virginia Woolf, shaped the consciousness of her times. Widely acknowledged as a brilliant literary critic, Sara Coleridge was also a poet, a novelist, a profound philosophical thinker, and a formidably accomplished editor. To Thomas De Quincey her achievements were astonishing; for Elizabeth Barrett she was the most learned woman of the day. Her opinionated, crest-perky prose always surprises and entices. Yet, until now, Sara Coleridge has been absent from anthologies of Victorian writings, ignored in histories of English literature.

Peter Swaab's splendid new edition of Sara Coleridge's Selected Literary Criticism is particularly welcome for making this outstanding nineteenth-century author available to new generations of readers.

Included here are Sara Coleridge's clear-sighted reflections on her own achievements as novelist, translator, poet, theologian, essayist, and reviewer. Here too are her influential commentaries on Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, alongside generous samples from her own published works. Extracts from her colorful and outspoken correspondence bear witness to Sara Coleridge's remarkable cultural intelligence–and few escaped her scrutiny. In this book are unsparing sketches of John Keats, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, Joanna Baillie, Dorothy Wordsworth, Dickens, Gaskell, Newman, Carlyle, Tennyson, Emerson, and the Brontes.

In his judicious selection, astute introduction and supporting materials, Peter Swaab is Sara Coleridge's exemplary editor. The Regions of Sara Coleridge's Thought shows us a woman of genius commanding an extraordinary age and making it her own. Now all readers can discover in this enthralling selection of her writings exactly how she did so.' - Nicholas Roe, professor of English Literature, University of St. Andrews


'Swaab's selection is carefully chosen and excellently arranged, and his introduction and notes provide expert guidance and further suggestions. Sara Coleridge—who stands at a crossroads where so many Victorian interests intersect and who evokes particular interest at the present time—has found the editor she richly deserves.' - J. C. C. Mays, Professor Emeritus, University College Dublin