Biographia Literaria is Coleridge’s brilliant if erratic exposition of his ‘literary life and opinions.’ In Chapter One, describing his time at Christ’s Hospital school, Coleridge mournfully declares he is an orphan: ‘In my friendless wanderings on our leave days, (for I was an orphan, and had scarce any connections in London) highly was I delighted, if any passenger, especially if he were drest in black, would enter into conversation with me.’
Frank O’Hara (1926-66), from the New York school of poets that flourished in the 1950s, gently satirises Coleridge’s tendency to self-mythologize.
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