Lamb, William Hazlitt, and other writers visited him there, making up an informal literary community. To compound these difficulties, Southey later lost interest in the scheme, abandoning it in 1795.Ĭoleridge then moved to Nether Stowey in England’s West Country. However, the match proved disastrous and Coleridge’s unhappy marriage was a source of grief to him throughout his life. The pantisocratic philosophy required every member to be married, and at Southey’s urging, Coleridge wed Sarah Fricker, the sister of Southey’s fiancee. As an outgrowth of their shared belief in liberty and equality for everyone, they developed a plan for “pantisocracy,” an egalitarian and self-sufficient agricultural system to be built in Pennsylvania. Inspired by the initial events of the French Revolution, Coleridge and Southey collaborated on The Fall of Robespierre.

He went on a walking tour to Oxford where he became friends with poet Robert Southey. He studied to become a minister, but in 1794, before completing his degree, Coleridge left Cambridge. In 1791 he entered Cambridge University, showing promise as a gifted writer and brilliant conversationalist. At the age of ten his father died and he was sent to Christ’s Hospital, a boarding school in London where he was befriended by fellow student Charles Lamb. Coleridge was a dreamy, isolative child and read constantly. Mary, Devon, England, the tenth child of John Coleridge, a minister and schoolmaster, and his wife, Ann Bowdon Coleridge. Author BiographyĬoleridge was born in 1772 in the town of Ottery St.

With the richness and variety of the imagery, the complexity of the symbols, and the multiple levels of meaning, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” still retains its magic for the reader. Beyond this basic level of comprehension, critics seldom agree on a standard interpretation of the poem. By learning to love, however, the Mariner partially redeems himself: for his penance he must wander the earth and retell his tale, explaining to people he encounters the lessons he has learned. Of good fortune) and is gravely punished by an extraneous force for this act. On its simplest level, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is a tale of crime, punishment, and redemption: a Mariner shoots an albatross (a bird This is the version of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” that currently appears in most anthologies and textbooks. Since the plot and theme had been considered confusing, he also included a marginal gloss, or set of notes, explaining the action of the poem. However, in an 1817 edition of his collected poems, Sybilline Leaves, Coleridge replaced some of the language he had previously deleted. Subsequently Coleridge, for the 1800 edition of the work, eliminated many Gothic elements and antiquated words. Several critics objected to Coleridge’s misuse of Old English, and (Wordsworth included) the over-extravagance of his supernatural imagery. The first publication of the poem in 1798 was received with little enthusiasm. Coleridge’s contribution, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” was written in imitation of the form, language, and style of earlier ballads, but it embodied Romantic characteristics with its use of supernatural and Gothic imagery. This collection is considered by many critics to be the first expression of what has come to be the Romantic movement in English poetry. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is the first poem in Lyrical Ballads, the collaborative effort of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth designed to explore new directions in poetic language and style, and move away from the formal and highly stylized literature of the eighteenth century.

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