Kathleen Coburn

[1][3] 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.

In 1949 Coburn was instrumental in negotiating the sale of this Chanter's House archive to the British Museum for £10,200, with a donation from the Pilgrim Trust.

[5] Coburn spent her entire academic career at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, firstly for four years as Assistant to the Dean of Women before joining the English Department in 1936, becoming Professor in 1953 until her retirement in 1971.

[6] She received a Leverhulme Award in 1948, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1953, was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1957, an Honorary Fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford in 1970, an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1974, an honorary DLitt of the University of Cambridge in 1975, and an honorary Doctorate from the University of Toronto in 1978 in recognition of her achievement in the field of Samuel Taylor Coleridge research and study.

[7] She was awarded the Pierre Chauveau Medal by the Royal Society of Canada[8] in 1979 and the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 1990.