This book examines how Coleridge staged his private woes in the public space of the newspaper. It looks at his publications in the Morning Post, which first published one of his most famous poems, Dejection. An Ode. It reveals how he found a socially sanctioned public outlet for poetic disappointments and personal frustrations which he could not possibly articulate in any other way. Featuring fresh, contextual readings of established major poems; original readings of epigrams, sentimental ballads, and translations; analyses of political and human-interest stories, this book reveals the remarkable extent to which Coleridge used the public medium of the newspaper to divulge his complex and ambivalent private emotions about his marriage, his relationship with the Wordsworths and the Hutchinsons, and the effect of these dynamics on his own poetry and poetics.

“The book is a worthy contribution to the body of works about Coleridge’s persistent self-fashioning, and illuminates a previously neglected area of his Morning Post journalism and his relationship with Robinson.” (Philip Aherne, Modern Language Review, Vol. 114 (3), July, 2019)

“Heidi Thomson’s Coleridge and the Romantic Newspaper: The ‘Morning Post’ and the Road to ‘Dejection’ provides a well-researched look at the connection between Coleridge’s life and work between 1799 and 1802. ... This book will be valuable to Coleridge scholars for the new network of texts that it assembles.” (Christine Woody, The Coleridge Bulletin, Vol. 50, 2017)

“Coleridge and the Romantic Newspaper offers a fascinating account of Coleridge's inner life in a clearly written, well organized format. Thomson's arguments are thoroughly grounded in Coleridge scholarship, and at several moments she makes original contributions.” (William A. Ulmer, Review 19,  nbol-19.org, December 2016)

Heidi Thomson is Associate Professor of English Literature at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and President of the Romantic Studies Association of Australasia. She is the editor of novels by Maria Edgeworth and the author of numerous chapters and articles about Thomas Gray, William Collins, Edgeworth, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats.