Ernest Hartley Coleridge

A carte-de-visite portrait of Ernest Hartley Coleridge (1846-1920), later a literary scholar and poet. He was the second son of Reverend Derwent Coleridge and the grandson of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Born in London in 1846, he was baptised at St Luke’s in Chelsea on 26 December 1846. He appears on the 1861 census, aged 14, living with his parents at St Mark’s College in Chelsea, where his father Derwent Coleridge was principal. He, however, was educated at Highgate School, Sherborne School and Balliol College, Oxford.

At the time of the 1871 census he was still living with his parents, who had now moved to the Rectory at Hanwell in Middlesex, where his father was rector.

In 1876 he married Sarah Mary Bradford, daughter of William Bradford of Abbotskerswell in Devon. Ernest and Sarah and the first of their four children appear on the 1881 census living at Chertsey in Surrey. For his profession, Ernest gave ‘M.A. Oxford / Private Schoolmaster.’ The household includes five teenage boys listed as scholars, so presumably Ernest was running a private school in the family home.

Ernest Coleridge is remembered for the scholarly work he did on his grandfather’s manuscripts, being the last of the Coleridges involved in their editing. He also took part in the campaign to buy the Coleridge Cottage in Nether Stowey for the nation.

He died, aged 74, on 19 February 1920 at Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. He left effects valued at £10,374.

Photographed by Camille Silvy of London on 3 July 1862.