Book dossier

Biographia literaria

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 1817 work Biographia Literaria is an autobiography in discourse; loosely structured and non-linear, the work is meditative and contains numerous philosophical essays. Initially criticized as the product of Coleridge's opiate-driven descent into illness, more recent critics have given the work far more credit and recognition. The book is the origin of the well-known critical idea of "willing suspension of disbelief."