SOURCE: An introduction to The Collected Poems of Mary Coleridge, edited with an introduction by Theresa Whistler, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954, pp. 21-76.

In the following introduction to The Collected Poems of Mary Coleridge, Whistler discusses Coleridge's family background, her literary influences, and her aesthetic sense.

Not very many people today have heard of Mary Coleridge. Yet her poems, when they first appeared, were praised with delight by Bridges, Newbolt, Binyon, Edward Thomas, and the young Walter de la Mare, and they have continued to give a special pleasure to their small circle of readers for half a century. This is not fame, but it is, in a modest way, to live. What is it, then, that lives on in the verses of a Victorian lady, still to captivate the new reader who idly turns the page?

The wailing wind doth not enough despair;
   The Sea, for all her sobbing...