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An overview of the life of Derwent Moultrie Coleridge (grandson of Samuel Taylor Coleridge).
Derwent Moultrie Coleridge migrated to South Australia in 1851 following a less than illustrious student career at both Oxford and Cambridge universities. He worked at various jobs in South Australia before joining the police force in Victoria and later took up teaching roles at Geelong Grammar School and Brighton Park School.
After a brief sojourn in England, Coleridge took up a position at St Mark’s Collegiate School in Sydney. During the 1860s and 1870s, some of Coleridge's poetry was published in colonial newspapers. (It was also during this period that his propensity for drunkenness saw him incarcerated in Darlinghurst Gaol.)
Coleridge tried his hand at acting in the 1870s, but his name appeared in newspapers more often for petty criminal offences than for his prowess on the stage. Coleridge died in December 1880 and is buried at Rookwood Cemetery.
