10 facts about Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born this date in 1772.
He was born in Ottery St Mary in Devon, England, the son of Reverend John Coleridge, a vicar and headmaster, and his second wife, Anne Bowden.
He was a voracious reader as a child. By the time he was six years old, he’d read Belisarius, Robinson Crusoe, and Philip Quarll, and then moved on to the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.
He attended Jesus College, Cambridge. While there, he won a prize for a poem against the slave trade, and made friends with fellow poet Robert Southey. The pair planned to found a utopian commune-like society, called Pantisocracy in Pennsylvania, but soon abandoned that idea.
Beset by financial difficulties in his third year of study, Coleridge took the name Silas Tomkyn Comberbache and joined the Royal Dragoons. Despite it not being an ideal life for an intellectual, he stuck it out until his brothers bought him out and he was able to return to university.
After leaving Cambridge, the two friends met two sisters called Sara and Edith Fricker, with whom they became romantically involved, Southey with Edith and Coleridge with Sara, and married them. Coleridge and Sara had one daughter, but the marriage wasn’t a happy one and they’d separated by 1804.
In 1795, Coleridge met poet William Wordsworth and the two poets became great friends. They co-wrote a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads. Even though one of Coleridge’s best known poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, was one of the collection, it didn’t sell well. The idea that it is bad luck to kill an albatross was unknown before the poem became popular. English heavy metal band Iron Maiden set The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to music.
Coleridge’s other most famous poem is Kubla Khan, which he wrote in 1797, by his own admission, while he was high on opium. That may have been why he didn’t publish it until 1816, and then only because Lord Byron persuaded him to.
He was a drug addict. He took opium for various health conditions and became addicted, using as much as two quarts of laudanum a week. It’s likely his drug problem was a factor in the break down of his marriage and his falling out with William Wordsworth. It’s possible it contributed to his death from heart failure and lung disease at the age of 61.
He gave us a number of words and phrases which are commonly used today. ‘Suspension of disbelief’ is one; ‘psychosomatic’ and ‘selfless’ are others. He was the first person to use the word ‘bisexual’ although he used it in the context of being ‘androgynous’ or ‘containing both sexes’ rather than the meaning we use nowadays. He also invented the word ‘bipolar’, and is believed to have suffered from that condition.
He was once described as the last person to have read everything.
Beta
(Combat Team Series #2)
Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?
Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.
Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.
Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.
Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.
Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.
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