The Vocation of Sara Coleridge: Authorship and Religion

This book presents a fundamental reassessment of Sara Coleridge. It examines her achievements as an author in the public sphere, and celebrates her interventions in what was a masculine genre of religious polemics. Sara Coleridge the religious author was the peer of such major figures as John Henry Newman and F. D. Maurice, and recognized as such by contemporaries. Her strategic negotiations with conventions of gender and authorship were subtle and successful. In this rediscovery of Sara Coleridge the author revises perspectives upon her literary relationship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Far from sacrificing her opportunities in service of her father’s memory, her rationale is to exploit his metaphysics in original religious writings that engage with urgent controversies of her own times. Sara Coleridge critiques the Oxford theology of Newman and his colleagues for authoritarian and elitist tendencies, and for creating a negative culture in religious discourse. In response, she experiments with methodologies of collaborative, dialogic exchange, in which form as much as content will promote liberal, inclusive and productive encounters. She develops this agenda in her major religious work, the unpublished Dialogues on Regeneration (1850–51), which this book examines in its penultimate chapter.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Sara Coleridge and the Contexts of Authorship.- 2. Towards a Vocation of Religious Authorship: Collaboration and Dialogue, 1818–1837.- 3. ‘On Rationalism’: ‘The Authoritative Word’ and ‘Liberty of Conscience’.- 4. Biographia 1847: Plagiarism, Literary Property and Dialogic Authorship.- 5. The Theory and Practice of Polemical Writing: Religious Authorship, 1847–1849.- 6. Authorial Vocation and Literary Innovation, 1850–1851.- 7. Conclusion: Public Renewal, Personal Redemption.

About the Author :
Robin Schofield read English at Lincoln College, Oxford, UK, before working as a school teacher. He obtained his PhD from Oxford Brookes University, UK.

Review :
“Upon reading Schofield’s illuminating book on Sara’s literary vocation as a religious author, it is simultaneously surprising and not that few scholars have taken up a study of Sara’s religious writings. … Schofield has brought Sara’s later religious writings to life as part of a lively Victorian religious debate that future scholars will find helpful as an introduction to Sara’s later work. This carefully researched book lays the groundwork for future study of Sara’s religious writings, especially her unpublished Dialogues.” (Anastasia Stelse, The Coleridge Bulletin, Issue 54, 2019) “The book’s strength lies in its ability to perform close analysis on a number of Coleridge’s little-known and understudied works, combining this with a study of early-nineteenth-century religion. … Schofield’s book is a catalyst for future research, and demonstrates that further study of Coleridge’s life, letters and predominantly her works would be welcome.” (Amy Wilcockson, The BARS Review, Issue 53, 2019)