Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A Bondage of Opium.

First edition. Large 8vo. 537pp. 12 b/w illus., incl. portrait frontis., coloured endpapers. Blue cloth boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Appendices, bibliography, index.

Previous owner's signature to f.f.e.p., else near fine.

A study of Coleridge with particular focus on the controversial element of plagiarism in his work; the author, fresh from a six-year stint of drug addiction study at Guy's Hospital, London, and drawing extensively on letters and Notebooks both published and unpublished argues that Coleridge's addiction to opium was a major contributing factor. "[A] portrait of neurosis, hypochondria and Bosch-like terrors." –Kirkus Reviews, Sept. 1, 1974