The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1798, revised 1817
- Form
- Lyric poetry
- Language
- English
- Length
- Short · 40 ppunder 120 pages
- Difficulty
- Moderate2 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendThe Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Other PoemsDover Thrift Editions, 1992The 1817 text with the marginal gloss, cheaply; any Coleridge selection includes it.
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A ballad in seven parts first published in Lyrical Ballads. An old sailor stops a wedding guest and tells how his ship was driven to the Antarctic, how he shot the albatross that had followed it, and how the crew died of thirst under a burning sky while he lived on, watched by Death and Life-in-Death. When he blesses the water snakes unaware, the curse begins to lift, the ship is brought home by spirits, and he is condemned to wander the earth telling his tale. Coleridge added a prose gloss in 1817.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns The Rime of the Ancient Mariner are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.