ABSTRACT
Biographia Literaria was first published in two volumes in 1817, at the time of Coleridge's closest relations with the already much more marketable Byron. An influential description of the latter kind is that by Marilyn Butler who sees the Biographia as a lay sermon to the propertied classes, reactionary not only in its abjuration of the levelling Wordsworth but also in its recall to religion and its appeal to the culture of counter-revolutionary Germany. The gap between volumes of Biographia is initially little more than an accident of publishing history. J. M. Gutch, the Bristol printer, found enough for two volumes, and then considered that the second volume would be too short. Whatever the contingent reasons, the gap between the volumes of the Biographia seems emblematic of a separation of philosophy from 'practical criticism', speculation from practice, and culture from politics evident in the later writings. Biographia Literaria claims for itself, the unity of philosophic and aesthetic speculation with 'practical criticism'.
