Kathleen Hazel Coburn (September 7, 1905 – September 23, 1991) was a Canadian

academic An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...

and a leading authority on the

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poe ...

Life

Born in Stayner,

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

, a fourth generation Canadian of Scottish–Irish descent,Coburn, Kathleen 'In Pursuit of Coleridge' Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1977 Coburn was one of six children born to John Coburn, a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...

minister, and Susannah Wesley Emerson, Victoria University Library Special Collections
/ref> Coburn was educated at

Harbord Collegiate Institute Harbord Collegiate Institute (HCI or Harbord) is a public secondary school located in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The school is located in the Palmerston-Little Italy-Annex neighbourhood, situated on the north side of Harbord Street, betw ...

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

, Ontario, Canada, and later studied at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

, taking a BA in 1928 and an MA in 1930. Having been awarded an Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire War Memorial Scholarship (IODE) to Oxford in 1930, she obtained a

BLitt Bachelor of Letters (BLitt or LittB; Latin ' or ') is a second undergraduate university degree in which students specialize in an area of study relevant to their own personal, professional, or academic development. This area of study may have been t ...

from

St Hugh's College, Oxford St Hugh's College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. It is located on a site on St Margaret's Road, to the north of the city centre. It was founded in 1886 by Elizabeth Wordsworth as a women's college, and accepte ...

in 1932. In 1930 the 25-year-old Coburn visited The Chanter's House at

Ottery St Mary Ottery St Mary, known as "Ottery", is a town and civil parish in the East Devon district of Devon, England, on the River Otter, about east of Exeter on the B3174. At the 2001 census, the parish, which includes the villages of Metcombe, Fair ...

in Devon, which had been the home of the Coleridge family for centuries. Here she discovered an extensive archive of documents written by

Geoffrey Coleridge, 3rd Baron Coleridge Geoffrey Duke Coleridge, 3rd Baron Coleridge (23 July 1877 – 27 March 1955) was responsible for making the archive of his family member the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge available to researchers for the first time. Biography The only son of Bern ...

gave her unlimited access to this archive, and allowed her to have it photographed and the copies placed in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

for the benefit of future scholars. He also granted her permission to edit and publish

Coleridge's Notebooks Coleridge's notebooks, of which seventy-two have survived, contain a huge assortment of memoranda set down by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge from 1794 until shortly before his death in 1834. Coleridge's biographer Richard Holmes summarised the ...

, which she edited from 1957 to 1990. In 1949 Coburn was instrumental in negotiating the sale of this Chanter's House archive to the

for £10,200, with a donation from the Pilgrim Trust. The collection was eventually deposited with the British Museum in May 1951. Coburn spent her entire

career at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, firstly for four years as Assistant to the Dean of Women before joining the English Department in 1936, becoming Professor in 1953 until her retirement in 1971.University of Toronto biography
/ref> She received a Leverhulme Award in 1948, a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 1953, was made a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; french: Société royale du Canada, SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bil ...

in 1957, an Honorary Fellow of

in 1970, an Officer of the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada (french: Ordre du Canada; abbreviated as OC) is a Canadian state order and the second-highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the ...

in 1974, an honorary DLitt of the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

in 1975, and an honorary

Doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

from the University of Toronto in 1978 in recognition of her achievement in the field of

research and study. In 1979 she was awarded the

Pierre Chauveau Medal The Pierre Chauveau Medal is a biennial award of the Royal Society of Canada "for a distinguished contribution to knowledge in the humanities other than Canadian literature and Canadian history". The award consists of a silver medal and is named ...

by the

and the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 1990. Coburn made a bequest to Victoria College to set up 'Coburn Fellowships' where up to three Fellowships a year valued at $20,000 are awarded to Canadian and

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

i students who are studying in the fields of

Fine Art In European academic traditions, fine art is developed primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from decorative art or applied art, which also has to serve some practical function, such as pottery or most metalwork ...

Humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...

.The Canada Council for the Arts website The E. J. Pratt Library in the

Victoria University in the University of Toronto Victoria University is a federated university forming part of the wider University of Toronto, and was founded in 1836. The undergraduate section of the university is Victoria College, informally ''Vic'', after the original name of the univers ...

has the Kathleen Coburn Reading Room, which is dedicated to Coburn's memory. Coburn published her

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

, '' 'In Pursuit of Coleridge' '', in 1977. She died in Toronto, Ontario in 1991.

Publications

*Coburn, Kathleen. 'Coleridge; A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967 *Experience into Thought: Perspectives in the Coleridge Notebooks. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979 *The Grandmothers. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1949 *In Pursuit of Coleridge. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1977 *The Self Conscious Imagination: A Study of the Coleridge Notebooks in Celebration of the Bi-centenary of his Birth 21 October 1772. London: Oxford University Press, 1974 *Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. General ed., Kathleen Coburn. London: Routledge and K. Paul; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969 *Inquiring Spirit: A New Presentation of Coleridge from his Published and Unpublished Prose Writings. Ed. Kathleen Coburn. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979 *Notebooks. Ed. Kathleen Coburn. New York: Pantheon Books, 1957-1990 *Hutchinson, Sara. Letters from 1800-1835. Ed. Kathleen Coburn. London: Routledge & Paul, 1954

References

External links

Coburn
on the

website
The Canada Council for the Arts website'In pursuit of Coleridge' by Kathleen Coburn. Review by Hazel K. Bell
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20080918093846/http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/02spring/feast.asp Coburn in the University of Toronto Magazine {{DEFAULTSORT:Coburn, Kathleen 1905 births 1991 deaths Officers of the Order of Canada Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada University of Toronto alumni Alumni of St Hugh's College, Oxford Samuel Taylor Coleridge Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy