This volume of letters - the vast majority of which are previously unpublished - presents a remarkable, often moving, and extraordinary image of the Coleridge family during Samuel Taylor Coleridge's youth, particularly between 1772 and 1793, when the writer reached twenty-one.

Revealing the strength of a family suffering repeated losses, James Engell places the Coleridge family letters in a larger biographical context, and offers a new, frank, yet sympathetic account of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's life. The letters provide illuminating insights into the formation of his adult character and patterns of behaviour, and specific implications both for his poetry and philosophic temperament.

From a collection in the British Library never before cited, the letters are primary documents of family and social history. They encompass STC's formative relationships with his brothers and sister; the long military service of two of his brothers in India; the significant role of Molly Newbery, the family nurse; and the multiple deaths in the Coleridge family, including the suicide of Samuel Taylor's brother Frank. The Early Family Letters will be vital reading for anyone interested in Coleridge and English Romanticism in general.