This biography considers Coleridge as a man apart from his writings. Holmes' objective is to give an impression of what the poet was like in person and as a conversationalist. Holmes reveals him to be disorganized, slothful, neurotically anxious and overly dependent on others. The book won the 1989 Whitbread Book of the Year Award. The author has also written Shelley: The Persuit, which won the Somerset Maugham Award and a novel Footsteps.