ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -As is well known, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an opium addict. He took opium in the form of laudanum, that is to say tincture of opium in alcohol, which he drank by the pint.

Detailed explanation-2: -Samuel Taylor Coleridge (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher who consumed opium to address his health issues. His use of opium in his home country of England, as well as Sicily and Malta, is extensively documented. Coleridge’s opium use led to severe consequences.

Detailed explanation-3: -In the Romantic period, a generation of women writers including Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dorothy Wordsworth and George Eliot were also habitual users of opium, and wrote extolling its “calming” properties in their writing, research by Dr Joseph Crawford, of the University of Exeter University, has found.

Detailed explanation-4: -During this time, Wordsworth and Coleridge greatly influenced, criticized and inspired eachother’s poetry. In 1798, the two poets joined together to publish the first edition of Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems that is considered by many to be the definitive starting point of the Romantic Era.