coleridge was born in ottery st mary, devon. he was the son of a minister, and the youngest of ten children. he attended the university of cambridge, jesus college, though he never earned his degree. he met wordsworth, another young poet, in 1795. they became close friends, and in 1798 they published their poems in a book called "lyrical ballads", which many critics consider a key event in english romanticism. most of the poems in the book were written by wordsworth, though it also contained coleridge's "the rime of the ancient mariner", which many people call his masterpiece and one of the great poems in english. (in it, coleridge used old-fashioned spellings, like "rime" for "rhyme," to give the poem an antique feeling.)