Samuel Taylor Coleridge, opium The Romantic poet composed one of his most famous works after taking laudanum in 1797. After waking from a stupor in which he'd dreamed of the stately pleasure-domes of a Chinese emperor, he scribbled 'Kubla Khan'. Coleridge's addiction finally killed him in 1834. Thomas De Quincey, laudanum His autobiographical account of his addiction to ...

THE FRIENDSHIP : WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE by Adam Sisman HarperPress,

Adam Sisman begins his story of one of the most famous friendships in literary history with the vivid account of a young man who, having already walked 40 miles, takes a short-cut across a Dorset cornfield, running to greet two people working in their garden. The young man is Samuel Taylor ...