This book provides a critical and biographical account of the fascinating hand-made book of rector William Greswell (1848-1923), in which he assembled British and American reviews and accounts of the Romantic poet, critic, philosopher, and religious thinker Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). J.C.C. Mays re-evaluates Coleridgeâs nineteenth-century reputation through the lens provided by Greswellâs workbook. Mays demonstrates how Coleridge is one of the most complicated and influential religious thinkers of the nineteenth century, whose âreligious musingsâ (most prominently as published in Aids to Reflection and On the Constitution of the Church and State, but also in posthumous collections such as Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit) cast a long shadow over religious thinking in nineteenth-century England and America. Although Greswell was but one of Coleridgeâs many readers in the nineteenth century, his engagement with Coleridgeâs writings was noteworthyfor the sheer mass of the materials he assembled, and the breadth of the Coleridge he depicts. Greswellâs Coleridge is a Coleridge in whom all Coleridgeans will be interested.
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