Sara Fricker Coleridge (1770–1845)

Sarah Fricker Coleridge was the eldest child in a liberal, prosperous merchant family with homes near Bristol and in Bath. Among her younger siblings, two sisters would also marry Romantic writers: Mary Fricker married Robert Lovell and Edith Fricker wed Robert Southey. The sisters were educated beyond the normal standards of the day for girls, probably at the school in Bristol run by Hannah More. Sarah read widely in both English and French and was particularly proficient in math. In 1786, when she was 16, her father went bankrupt and the family lost everything except the clothes they stood up in. The sisters found work as needlewomen for the fashionable society in which they had grown up. In 1794, Sarah met Samuel Taylor Coleridge at a party at the Lovell home. The couple married the following year. Although Sarah and their children lived in the Lake District, Coleridge spent much of his time traveling, lecturing, and writing, without supporting his family, and co-habited with Sarah less than six years of their four decades of marriage. She wrote essays and letters, many of which are now held in the University of Texas at Austin.