[David Anthony]

Interesting article here on the sonnet by Coleridge:

http://www.sonnets.org/coler1.htm

Note how he damns Petrarch and the form he devised as contrived and forced, and complains about archaisms and inversions. (This was written in 1796.)

Note also his praise of Lisle Bowles as the father of the contemporary sonnet. Bowles is almost forgotten now, but he wrote some fine stuff and his influence on Wordsworth, Keats and that generation was very great.

[Howard]

Here are Bowles' sonnets Coleridge refers to, the Fourteen Sonnets of 1789.

[David Anthony]

I reckon XIII is the best.
I think Hardy had his darkling thrush from there.