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LONDON, Jan 26, 2007 (UPI via COMTEX) -- The discovery of 120 unknown poems by Sara Coleridge, daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ranks her as an important minor poet, a British scholar says.
Peter Swaab, who made the find, said the cache sheds new light on the struggles facing an intellectual woman in Victorian England, the Telegraph reported.
Sara Coleridge, born in 1802, published two collections of poetry anonymously, apparently not wanting to trade on the family name, Swaab said.
The discovery of the Sara Coleridge's papers and poems in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin nearly doubles her known writings, Swaab said.
"She's an exceptionally gifted writer and deserves a much wider readership," said Swaab, who teaches English at University College in London. "She needs to be nudged up the list of people we consider to be important in Romantic and Victorian culture."
Swaab said the poems fall into three categories: romantic poems written to her cousin, Henry Nelson Coleridge, during their seven-year engagement; short story poems written to entertain her children; and poems written to the Irish Romantic poet Aubrey de Vere, with whom she struck up a friendship after her husband's death.
URL: www.upi.com Copyright 2007 by United Press International
