Samantha Harvey Reads Coleridge's Afterlives

Before reviewing James Vigus and Jane Wright’s fascinating collection of essays, I must note that John Beer’s excellent afterword to the volume weaves together the multiplicitous strands of Coleridge’s afterlives into a truly Coleridgean unity. This unity is far from univocal, but rather, as Beer notes, the one quality that must stand out in looking at the reception of Coleridge’s thought is its ambiguity, arising from “the contradictions and dilemmas of Coleridge’s personality and career” (254). In thirteen commissioned essays, Coleridge’s Afterlives explores the profoundly variegated response to what Seamus Perry refers to as “the rich confusion of Coleridge’s literary thinking” (244) which rather than obscuring his legacy, made it tenfold more fertile as evidenced by the wide range of subjects covered in this volume.