His Brother's Keeper: a Psychobiography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

His Brother's Keeper explores the mystery of what drove suicidally depressed Samuel Taylor Coleridge to drop out of college, assume a fictitious identity and enlist in the army to atone for a crime he never committed. Four years later, in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the poet once again relived the nightmare of his undeserved guilt, this time creating a world-renowned poem in the process. This book is a psychological study of survivor guilt and of the idealistic, troubled partnership between Coleridge and William Wordsworth. An in-depth exploration of Coleridge's life and art which reads like a novel, it offers insights into the creative process and a clinical examination of the poet's addiction. Hooked on opium by the age of 30, he destroyed his marriage, his friendships and his creative imagination. His final, hollow years were spent living on his laurels as the writer of several of the most famous poems in the English language.