"[A] fine study of Coleridge's thinking.... Excellent...it cannot but open our eyes to the substantial 'zigzaggery' of Coleridge's thinking in a new way. It also makes it, rightly, harder to look down on one of the 'dark horse' geniuses of the last two hundred years."--European Romantic Review

"In Perry's adept hands, we see division everywhere in Coleridge's oeuvre, and we indeed come to see it less as debilitaing inconsistency than as a shifting pattern of engagement....Perry makes his case with an impressive marshaling of evidence. One of the strongest elements in this strong book is Perry's remarkable possession of Coleridge's writings. His fluency with Coleridge's notebooks is positively breath-taking, and his handling of Coleridge's contemporaries as well as his recent critics reveals much erudition....This is a book that deserves a central place among the best critical literature on the poet; it should have a wide-ranging appeal to those who care deeply about Coleridge and his works and follow the debates that have defined his place in literary history."--The Wordsworth Circle