James Dykes Campbell's biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1894) is a landmark in the history of the genre in that it defines the standards of scholarship, accuracy, documentation, and impartiality by which every biographer of Coleridge has since been measured. Moreover, despite his lack of formal education, Campbell's dedication to his research, his passion for truth, and his love of literature, combined with a warm understanding of humanity, enabled him to write a work that did much to establish biography at the center of literary studies.

Campbell was born at Port Glasgow, Scotland, on 2 November 1838; he was the second son and third child of Peter Campbell and Jean Dykes Campbell. At six he was sent to the burgh school in Port Glasgow, where he received an education that included French and Latin. He left school at fourteen and joined the office of a local merchant. On the death of...