Black Mahler dramatically brings to life the true story of all but forgotten, English composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912). Born to a white mother and black father and raised in the London suburb of Croydon, Coleridge's titanic, choral trilogy, 'Hiawatha' makes this funny, generous and modest young man a worldwide sensation - overnight. Although hailed a cultural hero by African-Americans, Coleridge struggles against financial ruin, personal tragedy and seismic obstacles throughout his short life. Along the way, he unites a world. This moving, human life story will haunt the memory long after the final page is turned.

Washington, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Harry Burleigh, and the Fisk Jubilee Singers followed Taylor's lead, feeling that the time was right for them to manifest their cultural heritage. Langston Hughes and other talents associated with the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s saw Taylor as a father figure, a role model, and an example of victory over prejudice.".

Green’s study is more than a biography of an Anglo-African composer.The first comprehensive study of Coleridge-Taylor’s life for almost a century, it reveals how class-ridden Britain could embrace even the most unlikely of cultural icons.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is best known as a great poet and literary theorist, but for one, quite short, period of his life he held real political power - acting as Public Secretary to the British Civil Commissioner in Malta in 1805. This was a formative experience for Coleridge which he later identified as being one of the most instructive in his entire life. In this volume Barry Hough and Howard Davis show how Coleridge's actions whilst in a position of power differ markedly from the idealism he had advocated before taking office - shedding new light on Coleridge's sense of political and legal morality.