The Lady on the Drawingroom Floor with Selected Poetry and Prose, by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, seeks to reclaim Coleridge’s reputation as a novelist, poet, critic, and educator by featuring familiar works alongside unpublished or out-of-print works. This collection includes a substantial introduction to Coleridge, analyzing her life and legacy; the whole of Coleridge’s final published novel; and a selection of important poems, short stories, essays, and letters. This discussion of her career invites the reader to consider her poetry and other writing alongside the novel that early critics called her most reflective and mature. In restoring the integrity of Coleridge’s literary canon, this volume offers new ways of understanding the complexities of an innovative Victorian writer who deserves to be better known and featured more prominently in anthologies and college courses. This collection is intended to introduce scholars, undergraduate and graduate students, and the general reading public to Coleridge’s specific and considerable contributions to late-Victorian literature.
