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Unit 3: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge

3.1 About Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his Major Works Notes

Figure 3.1: Samuel Taylor

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Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/SamuelTaylorColeridge.jpg 3
Born in Devonshire in England in 1772, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a renowned English A
lyrical poet, philosopher and critic. His Lyrical Ballads, written with William Wordsworth, 3
signalled the English Romantic movement. His Biographia Literaria (1817) is the most significant 3
work of general literary criticism produced in the English Romantic period.

Samuel’s father who was a clergyman, shifted with his family to London when Samuel was
young. As a child Coleridge was already an extraordinary reader, and he engrossed himself to
the point of gloomy fascination in romances and Eastern tales such as The Arabian Nights’
Entertainment. In 1781 Samuel’s father died suddenly, and in the following year he entered
Christ’s Hospital in London, where he completed his secondary education. Samuel later
remembered his school days in poems like “Frost at Midnight”. Samuel later went to Cambridge
but left from there without completing his studies. At school and university Samuel continued
to read hungrily, mainly the works of visionary philosophy and imagination, and he was
remembered by his schoolmates for his articulate and prodigious memory.
The French Revolution shook entire Europe during the politically charged atmosphere of the
late eighteenth century, and France and England were at war. It was during this time that Samuel
made a distinct mark for himself both as a significant young poet and as a political radical. His
friends William Wordsworth and Robert Southey also became important figures during the
time. Samuel became one of the most significant writers in England. Working together with
Wordsworth on the innovative Lyrical Ballads of 1798, Samuel helped in inaugurating the Romantic
era in England; as Wordsworth described it in the 1802 preface to the third edition of the work,
the idea of poetry underlying Lyrical Ballads twisted the recognised conventions of poetry upside
down: Privileging plainly stated themes over elaborate symbolism, natural speech over poetic
ornament, the experience of natural beauty over urban sophistication, and emotion over abstract
thought, the book made way for two generations of poets, and it stands as one of the highlights
of European literature.

While Samuel made significant contributions to Lyrical Ballads, it was much more Wordsworth’s
project than Samuel’s. Therefore, while Wordsworth’s poetic output can be understood in light
of his preface to the 1802 edition of the volume, the preface’s ideas must not be used to study and
examine Samuel’s work. While Wordsworth was considered to be the poet of nature, the purity
of babyhood, and memory, Samuel came to be known as the poet of imagination, exploring the

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