Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Names
From a letter by STC, on his first name:
``from my earliest years I have had a feeling of Dislike &
Disgust connected with my own Christian Names: such a vile short
plumpness, such a dull abortive smartness in the first Syllable,
& this so harshly contrasted by the obscurity &
indefiniteness of the syllable Vowel, and the feebleness of the
uncovered liquid, with which it ends--the wabble it makes, &
staggering between a diss--& a tri-syllable--& the whole
name sounding as if you were abeeceeing S.M.U.L.--altogether it is
perhaps the worst combination, of which vowels & consonants are
susceptible.''
(but he liked
Coleridge)
Some pseudonyms:
- STC, Estisi,
or
- his usual name for publishing poetry
- Silas Tomkyn
Comberbache
- Nehemiah Higginbottom - in the Monthly Magazine for
November, 1797, he published ``three mock Sonnets in ridicule of my own Poems,
and Charles Lloyd's and Lamb's, etc., etc., exposing that
affectation of unaffectedness, of jumping and misplaced accent in
common-place epithets, flat lines forced into poetry by italics
(signifying how well and mouthishly the author would read them),
... I think they may do good to our young Bards.''--S.T.C., letter
to J. Cottle, November 1797.
- Other names used for publishing one or a very few (each name)
humorous, political and/or serious poems in newspapers: Cuddy,
Laberius, Nicias Erythraeus, Cordomi, Gnome, Ventifrons (= Windy
Brow, a hill near Keswick), Zagri, Aphilos
- the Friend
- Idoloclastes
Satyrane, or
Satyrane
(He sometimes did it for fun, but it was also considered
inexcusably conceited at the time, to use one's own name in a
contribution to a mere newspaper.)