The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ned Halley (Introduction)

Overview

Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound pocket-sized gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality paper, and featuring ribbon markers and gilt edges, Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, one of the best-known and best-loved poems in the English language, a grizzled old sailor stops a man on his way to a wedding and tells a terrifying story. He speaks of how he doomed the crew of his ship by shooting dead an albatross, awakened the wrath of ocean spirits, met Death himself, and must now walk the earth forever and share his tragic tale of sin, guilt and – ultimately – redemption.

This Macmillan Collector's Library edition of Coleridge’s longest major poem features illustrations by Gustave Doré, the most remarkable wood engraver of the 19th century, and an introduction by Ned Halley.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781509842919
Publisher:	Macmillan Collector's Library
Publication date:	10/03/2017
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	188,421
Product dimensions:	3.70(w) x 5.70(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in the English town of Ottery St Mary, where his father was a vicar, in 1772. The youngest of ten children, he attended school with Charles Lamb and spent two years at Jesus College, Cambridge where he was introduced to radical politics and theology by the poet Robert Southey. He first met William Wordsworth in 1795 and they published a joint poetry collection, Lyrical Ballads, in 1798; this highly praised volume, which started the English Romantic Movement, contained the first version of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Alongside finding success with his poetry, Coleridge’s critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential. However much of his life was blighted by illness, opium addiction, financial problems and depression. He died of heart failure in London in 1834.

Table of Contents

To the Author of 'The Robbers' [sonnet; 1794?]
Sonnet: To a Friend Who Asked, How I Felt When the Nurse First Presented My Infant to Me [1796]
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison [1797]
The Dungeon [1797]
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner [1797-98, revised later; marginal glosses added 1815-16]
On a Ruined House in a Romantic Country [No. III of 'Sonnets Attempted in the Manner of Contemporary Writers,' 1797]
Christabel [Part 1, 1797; Part II, 1800; 'The Conclusion to Part II,' 1801]
Frost at Midnight [1798]
France: An Ode [1798]
Lewti; or, The Circassian Love-Chaunt [1798]
Fears in Solitude [1798]
The Nightingale [1798]
Kubla Khan [1798]
The Ovidian Elegiac Metre [1799]
Something Childish, but Very Natural [1799]
Love [1799]
Dejection: An Ode [1802]
The Pains of Sleep [1803]
To William Wordsworth [1807]
The Knight's Tomb [1817?]
On Donne's Poetry [1818?]
Youth and Age [1823, with additions in 1832]
Cologne [1828]

Editorial Reviews

"It is an ancient Mariner, and he stoppeth one of thee...." Although these ominous lines perennially instill fear of final exams and term papers in the minds of high school students and Romantic English majors, they're not often remembered by adults. Mason's reading of Coleridge's 1796 epic poem is at once hypnotic and stirring. The Academy Award-nominated actor reads the chilling tale involving clashes with sea monsters, a boat swarming with zombies and a dice game with Death in an authoritative English accent. Like the ocean surrounding the Mariner's ship, his voice ebbs and flows with the imaginative poem's various heights. He quickly rattles off, "water, water, every where, and all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink" but gently whispers "And I had done an hellish thing, and it would work `em woe: For all averred, I had killed the bird that made the breeze to blow." Coleridge (1772-1834), uses words to make the fantastical believable, and here, Mason brings those words vividly to life. A bonus track features Mason's animated reading of The Hunting of the Snark, an eight-canto poem by Lewis Carroll. (Feb.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Gr 4 Up-- One of the classic poems of the romantic period of English literature has been illustrated with charcoal drawings and full-color, full-page pastel seascapes by Young. Coleridge's masterpiece has much to recommend it to a modern audience because of its central theme of the importance of ``all things both great and small;'' also, the mysterious supernatural events, the skeleton ship, and the zombie crew are occult touches that will appeal to many young readers. However, Coleridge's 18th-century rhymes and references make difficult reading and, although the marginal asides are helpful, much of the religious structure of the poem and many of the archaic words remain obscure. Although they may admire Young's dramatic pictures and will certainly enjoy the rich format of the book, few 20th-century readers will persevere unaided through all seven parts of this work of penitence. Its primary audience is adults who wish to preserve and use a recognized piece of English literature by reading it aloud to a new generation of young people. --Shirley Wilton, Ocean County College, Toms River, NJ

School Library Journal

Intended as a college-level introduction to the poem, this volume presents the 1798 and 1817 versions side by side, followed by five different critical approaches of the poem (reader-response, Marxist, New Historical, psychoanalytic, and deconstructivist) with discussion of each theoretical treatment. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)

Booknews

The late James Mason chillingly renders Coleridge's 1798 verse fable, THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. In rhyming couplets, an old salt tells a passing stranger of how his killing an albatross on a sea voyage led to the deaths of his crew mates and other supernatural horrors. Aside from its mystical significance and poetic brilliance, the mariner's tale is something to scare Boy Scouts with at a late night camp-out. Mason delivers that scary yarn aspect as well as other virtues in the sonorous tones for which he is justly famous. Likewise, Roy Dotrice throws himself into Lewis Carroll's mock heroic HUNTING OF THE SNARK (1867), a perfect complement--or antidote--to MARINER. Dotrice possessed some of the same skills as Mason--a beautiful voice, elegance, and a seemingly effortless skill. As exhibited here, he also can let loose with plenty of delightful silliness. This volume, like the poems themselves, will engage both children and adults. Y.R. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

DEC 02/JAN 03 - AudioFile