The Friend: A Series of Essays, to Aid in the Formation of Fixed Principles in Politics, Morals, and Religion, with Literary Amusements Interspersed.
Burlington: Chauncey Goodrich, 1831. First American Edition. Hard Cover. Fair / No Jacket. Item #2332081
First American edition, from the three-volume second London edition of 1818, complete in one volume. Boards and page edges stained, a handful of pages foxed, corners rubbed.
viii, 510 pp. 8vo. Cloth spine over paper-covered boards, paper spine label. This and Coleridge's Essays on the Principles of Method influenced John Stuart Mill, Ralph Waldo Emerson and other American Transcendentalists, etc. He was, of course, best known for his poetry, most notably the oft-misquoted The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The Friend appeared originally as a serialized journal, and included contributions by William Wordsworth and John Wilson (who wrote under the name Christopher North). "Commentators always had difficulty in characterizing the special nature of Coleridge's achievement: indeed, his true legacy lay, perhaps, in the creativity he awakened in those he met. Lamb, Wordsworth, Hazlitt, De Quincey, Byron, and Keats, touched by him in turn, each manifested the effects in the quality of their writing... Thinkers such as these produced what came to be known as the broad-church movement, and in some cases the beginnings of Christian socialism. Across the Atlantic, in the same years, Coleridge's influence, while affecting writers such as Emerson and Poe, was most strongly felt in religious and theological fields, particularly in New England and Vermont." (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
Price: $125.00