In the past, critics of Coleridge's journal, The Friend, have referred to the much revised work of 1818. This is the first study of the early, unrevised journal. Coleman reconstructs the personal and intellectual background to Coleridge's project, focusing particularly on the circumstances surrounding its production, Coleridge's uneasy debut as a government apologist, and his debts to a tradition of English conservatism. Drawing on a number of unpublished manuscript sources, Coleman sheds light on a number of important tensions of the period, including those between religion and politics, idealism and pragmatism, and an author and his readers.