‘Ancient Mariner, The Rime of the’

‘Ancient Mariner, The Rime of the’, written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) and first published in Lyrical Ballads in 1798. The poem was almost certainly inspired by a remark made by William Wordsworth to Coleridge during a walk over the Quantock Hills in the summer of 1797. He told him that he had been reading A Voyage round the World (1726), written by the privateer George Shelvocke, and had been struck by the passage in the book describing the shooting of an albatross by the second in command of Shelvocke's ship. Other suggestions of its origin were a dream said to have been told to Coleridge by his friend George Cruikshank after reading Strange and Dangerous Voyage (1633) by Thomas James (c.1593–1635), which described James's search for a North-West Passage; and a letter of St Paulinus, Bishop of York (d. 644), to Macarius telling of the shipwreck of an old man and how, with only one remaining member of the crew, the ship was navigated by angels and steered by the ‘pilot of the world’. However, the most likely source of the poem is unquestionably Shelvocke's account of his voyage.

See also marine literature.