Sara Coleridge

English author and translator. She was the third child and only daughter of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In 1822, she published Account of the Abipones, a translation in three large volumes. In September 1829, at Crosthwaite Parish Church, Keswick, after an engagement of seven years duration, Sara Coleridge was married to her cousin, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1798–1843), younger son of Captain James Coleridge. He was then a chancery barrister in London. The first eight years of her married life were spent in a little cottage in Hampstead. There four of her children were born, of whom two survived. In 1834 Mrs. Coleridge published her Pretty Lessons in Verse for Good Children; with some Lessons in Latin in Easy Rhyme. These were originally written for the instruction of her own children, and became very popular. In 1837 the Coleridges moved to Chester Place, Regents Park; and in the same year appeared Phantasmion, a Fairy Tale, Sara Coleridge's longest original work, described by critic Mike Ashley as "the first fairytale novel written in English". In 1843, Henry Coleridge died, leaving to his widow the unfinished task of editing her father's works. To these she added some compositions of her own, among which are the Essay on Rationalism, with a special application to the Doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, appended to Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, a Preface to the Essays on his Own Times, by S. T. Coleridge, and the Introduction to the Biographia Literaria. During the last few years of her life Sara Coleridge was a confirmed invalid. Shortly before she died she amused herself by writing a little autobiography for her daughter. This, which reaches only to her ninth year, was completed by her daughter, and published in 1873, together with some of her letters, under the title Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge. The letters show a cultured and highly speculative mind. They contain many apt criticisms of known people and books, and are specially interesting for their allusions to Wordsworth and the Lake Poets. Sara Coleridge died in London on 3 May 1852. Link to Wikipedia biography