Kathleen Coburn

Kathleen Hazel Coburn, OC, FRSC (September 7, 1905 – September 23, 1991) was a Canadian academic and a leading authority on the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Born in Stayner, Ontario, a fourth generation Canadian of Scottish–Irish descent, Coburn was one of six children born to John Coburn, a Methodist minister, and Susannah Wesley Emerson, Coburn was educated at Harbord Collegiate Institute in Toronto, Canada and later studied at the University of Toronto, taking a BA in 1928 and an MA in 1930. Having been awarded an Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire War Memorial Scholarship (IODE) to Oxford in 1930, she obtained a B.Litt from St Hugh's College, Oxford in 1932.

In 1930 the 25-year-old Coburn visited The Chanter's House at Ottery St Mary in Devon, which had been the home of the Coleridge family for centuries. Here she discovered an extensive archive of documents written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Geoffrey Coleridge, 3rd Baron Coleridge gave her unlimited access to this archive, and allowed her to have it photographed and the copies placed in the British Museum for the benefit of future scholars. He also granted her permission to edit and publish Coleridge's Notebooks, which she edited from 1957 to 1990.

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