Monthly Archives: February 2007

Women's history

Oh, you mean the male Coleridge

No I was talking about, or rather have been reading about Sara. Samuel was her father. She’s been “rediscovered” and looks like being brought back into the limelight – or at least someone is giving it a rather good go.

She had a lot to write about, for her father left the family home when she was three, then:

Her husband’s parents disapproved of her marriage, three of their five children died soon after birth, she suffered severe depression in the 1830s and her husband died young in 1843.

And her final subject was breast cancer. Written soon before she died:

Doggrel Charm
To a little lump of malignity, on being medically assured that it was not a fresh growth, but an old growth splitting.
Split away, split away,
split away, split!
Plague of my life, delay pretermit!
Rapidly, rapidly, rapidly go!
Haste ye to mitigate
trouble and woe!…

That’s what you call dying well, with spirit and brave anger.