John Taylor Coleridge, Forgotten Editor of The Quarterly Review

In late 1824, aged 34, John Taylor Coleridge (1790-1876) inherited the editorship of The Quarterly Review from its founding editor William Gifford. A London lawyer with literary ambitions, a famous surname, and impeccable Oxford credentials, young Coleridge must have seemed destine for prominence in London's literary circles. Instead, he prepared a mere four issues, March, June, October, and December 1825, before falling from favor with publisher John Murray and relinquishing his post to novice editor John Lockhart. Coleridge's rapid rise and fall have been either forgotten or misunderstood. His biographer, Timothy Toohey, frames Coleridge's life story around the legal profession, dismissing his periodical work as "prompted less by his love of literature than his need to earn additional income."¹ Joanne Shattock's excellent history of the Quarterly during the early nineteenth century notes that Coleridge's commitment to the editorial profession is "unclear" and concludes, "in retrospect, it was generally assumed that [Coleridge] had taken the editorship temporarily."²

Regardless of his motivation or depth of commitment, Coleridge eagerly sought his fortune as editor in the turbulent world of the London periodical press.³ Editors and the periodicals they served came and went, and only a few editors, notably Gifford and Lockhart at the Quarterly and Francis Jeffrey at the Edinburgh Review, achieved longevity. Coleridge's place in the topsy-turvey profession might have remained a footnote in studies of the Quarterly but for the British Library's 2006 acquisition from the Coleridge estate of thirty-five volumes of John's private journals. Documenting Coleridge's life from 1811 when he entered Oxford to his death in 1876, the journals shed new light on his remarkable life, including his interaction with the London periodical press. The purpose of this essay, then, is to use the newly available material to establish Coleridge's brief but spectacular trajectory in the periodical profession: his tortured relationship with Gifford and Murray and eventual ascension to the Quarterly editorship, his agenda for the Tory organ once he arrived, and his rapid fall from the world of London's periodical press.

Becoming a Man of Letters, 1809-1818

John Coleridge was born in Tiverton into relative comfort. While he spent his childhood in Devon surrounded by an accomplished extended family, the most famous Coleridge, poet Samuel Taylor, had become estranged and remained an intriguing mystery throughout young John's childhood. Coleridge entered Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1809 where he formed lifelong friendships with a network of future collaborators, including fellow Corpusmen John Keble, later the poet of The Christian Year, and Thomas Arnold, future headmaster of Rugby. Across Oxford's High Street at Brasenose College, Coleridge's close friend from Eton, Henry Hart Milman, took up residence. This circle of friends, along with Augustus W. Hare of New College; Julius Hare of Trinity College, Cambridge; James Randall of Trinity College, Oxford; and Charles Longley of Christ Church, formed the core membership of the secret Attic Society, which gathered to dine, practice for their viva voce examinations, compose and recite poetry, discuss literature and academic questions, ramble in Bagley Woods, and debate political issues of the day.

Coleridge entered Oxford at one of the few moments when interest in the periodical press rivaled interest in the classics. The year he came up marked the birth of the Quarterly, which counted several Oxford dons, such as John Kidd, Aldrichian Professor of Chemistry, among its founding contributors. During his undergraduate days, Coleridge kept a detailed reading list that detailed how he and members of his "club" read regularly from the Quarterly, Edinburgh Review, and the Edinburgh Annual Register, as well as Aristotle, Herodotus, Shakespeare, Paley, Dr. Johnson, and Edward Copleston's satirical Advice to a Young Reviewer.⁴ More importantly, Coleridge and his friends used the periodical press to stay abreast of the growing battle over the utility of a classical university education waged between Sydney Smith at the Edinburgh Review and Copleston, then a fellow at Oriel College and formerly an undergraduate at Corpus Christi. Copleston's Reply to the Calumnies of the Edinburgh Review (1810...