The Biographia Literaria is a critical autobiography by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published in 1817 in two volumes. Its working title was 'Autobiographia Literaria'. The formative influences on the work were Wordsworth's theory of poetry, the Kantian view of imagination as a shaping power (for which Coleridge later coined the neologism "esemplastic"), various post-Kantian writers including F.W.J. von Schelling, and the earlier influences of the empiricist school, including David Hartley and the Associationist psychology. Structure and tone The work is long and seemingly loosely structured, and although there are autobiographical elements, it is not a straightforward or linear autobiography. Its subtitle, 'Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions', alludes to The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne, suggesting that the formal qualities of the Biographia are intentional. The form is also meditative. As Kathleen Wheeler shows, the work is playful and acutely aware of the active role of the reader in reading. Critical reaction Critics have reacted strongly to the Biographia Literaria. Some early readers thought it demonstrated Coleridge's opiate-driven decline into ill health, and soon after Coleridge's death he was accused of plagiarising Schelling. But by the early twentieth century it had emerged as a major if puzzling work in criticism and theory, with George Saintsbury placing Coleridge next to Aristotle and Longinus in his influential History of 1902-04. Recent criticism has been divided between those who think that the Biographia's philosophical pretensions were illusory, and those who take the philosophy seriously. While contemporary critics recognize the degree to which Coleridge borrowed from his sources (with passages lifted straight from Schelling), they also see in the work far more structure and planning than is apparent on first glance. Content The work was originally intended as a preface to a collected volume of his poems, explaining and justifying his own style and practice in poetry. The work grew to a literary autobiography, covering his education and studies, and his early literary adventures, an extended criticism of William Wordsworth's theory of poetry as given in the 'Preface' to the Lyrical Ballads (a work on which Coleridge collaborated), and a statement of his philosophical views. Imagination The first volume is mainly concerned with the evolution of his philosophic views. At first an adherent of the associationist psychology of the philosopher David Hartley, he came to discard this mechanical system for the belief that the mind is not a