The Morning Post and ‘Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie’

Abstract

The publication of ‘Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie’ in the Morning Post on 21 December 1799 confirmed Coleridge’s popularity as a newspaper poet. Later reconfigured as ‘Love’, this poem proclaimed Coleridge’s love for Sara Hutchinson and his need for a sympathetic audience. In a reading of both the letter ‘To the Editor of the Morning Post’ and the poem itself, I analyse how this poem departs from ‘The Eolian Harp’ and how it stages an alternative response in a mutually responsive erotic encounter. I then show how ‘Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie’ prefigures the ambivalent praise in ‘To William Wordsworth’. The chapter also explains the way in which ‘Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie’ is connected with the exclusion of ‘Lewti’ from the 1798 Lyrical Ballads. This chapter illustrates the difference between Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s poetics, even at this early stage.