Author: Coleridge, Sara
Biography:
COLERIDGE, Sara (1802-52: ODNB)
She was born at Greta Hall, Keswick, Cumberland on 23 Dec. 1802 and baptised on 3 Nov. 1803 at Crosthwaite church, the youngest of three surviving children of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (q.v.) and his wife Sara Fricker. The only daughter, she was educated at home by her mother and by her aunt and uncle, Edith and Robert Southey (q.v.)—and no doubt by the other children in their mixed household. She had the run of her uncle’s enormous library. Sara was a serious student, especially of languages. Her first publications were a translation from Latin of An Account of the Abipones (1822) and one from French on the “Chevalier Bayard” (1825). On 3 Sept. 1829, her wedding day, her father inscribed his polyglot Virgil as a bequest to her and her daughters to come, praising her “unusual Attainments in Ancient and Modern Languages.” She married her cousin Henry Nelson Coleridge (1798-1843) after a long engagement and they had two children who grew to maturity, but they also suffered several miscarriages and the early death of twins in 1834. Her Pretty Lessons and a prose fairy-tale, Phantasmion (1837), were written with her own children in mind. The great mission of the Coleridge family including Henry Nelson Coleridge after the death of the poet in 1834 was to secure his reputation and to see all his works into print. The burden of this task fell on Sara after the death of her husband in 1842. She proved to be an outstanding editor and critic, not only arguing the case for Coleridge’s integrity and philosophical consistency in lengthy learned essays but also, as a Victorian intellectual, contributing to current debates in literature, art, and religion. She died of breast cancer at home at 10 Chester Place, Regent’s Park, London, on 3 May 1852 and was buried at Highgate Cemetery. (ODNB 22 Sept. 2023; ancestry.com 22 Sept. 2023; findmypast.com 22 Sept. 2023; S. T. Coleridge, Marginalia 6 [2001], 30)