Samuel Taylor Coleridge

When it was first published, Lyrical Ballads enraged the critics of the day: Wordsworth and Coleridge had given poetry a voice, one decidedly different to that which had been voiced before. This acclaimed Routledge Classics edition offers the reader the opportunity to study the poems in their original contexts as they appeared to Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s contemporaries, and includes some of their most famous poems, including Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancyent Marinere.

Feelings come alive through the words of the Romantic poets. Romanticism gained traction in the late 1700s as writers moved away from the intellectualism of the Enlightenment and toward more emotional and natural themes. The major works of the movement's six most famous poets-William Wordsworth, George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and William Blake-are represented in this handsome Word Cloud Classics volume, The Romantic Poets. One of the largest and most influential artistic movements in history, Romanticism valued intuition and pastoralism, and its themes are well represented in the verse of its stars.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (originally The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere) is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797-98 and published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Modern editions use a revised version printed in 1817 that featured a gloss. Along with other poems in Lyrical Ballads, it was a signal shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British Romantic literature. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner relates the experiences of a sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage. The mariner stops a man who is on the way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The wedding-guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience to fear to fascination as the mariner's story progresses, as can be seen in the language style: Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood in different parts of the poem. The mariner's tale begins with his ship departing on its journey. Despite initial good fortune, the ship is driven south by a storm and eventually reaches Antarctic waters. An albatross appears and leads them out of the ice jam where they are stuck, but even as the albatross is praised by the ship's crew, the mariner shoots the bird: With my cross-bow, I shot the albatross. The crew is angry with the mariner, believing the albatross brought the south wind that led them out of the Antarctic. However, the sailors change their minds when the weather becomes warmer and the mist disappears: 'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay, That bring the fog and mist. They soon find that they made a grave mistake in supporting this crime, as it arouses the wrath of spirits who then pursue the ship "from the land of mist and snow"; the south wind that had initially led them from the land of ice now sends the ship into uncharted waters near the equator, where it is becalmed. Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink. The very deep did rot - Oh Christ That ever this should be. Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs, Upon the slimy sea. The sailors change their minds again and blame the mariner for the torment of their thirst. In anger, the crew forces the mariner to wear the dead albatross about his neck, perhaps to illustrate the burden he must suffer from killing it, or perhaps as a sign of regret: Ah Well a-day What evil looks Had I from old and young Instead of the cross, the albatross About my neck was hung. Eventually, the ship encounters a ghostly hulk. On board are Death (a skeleton) and the "Night-mare Life-in-Death", a deathly-pale woman, who are playing dice for the souls of the crew. With a roll of the dice, Death wins the lives of the crew members and Life-in-Death the life of the mariner, a prize she considers more valuable. Her name is a clue to the mariner's fate: he will endure a fate worse than death as punishment for his killing of the albatross.

Based on a comparison of early editions, manuscripts, and copies annotated by the poet himself, this edition provides a reliable text of Coleridge's last prose work, first published in 1830. Originally intended to influence public opinion on the Catholic Emancipation Bill of 1829, the work became a brief but brilliant synthesis of Coleridge's political and theological thought, whose influence extended well beyond the nineteenth century. John Colmer's introduction and notes place the work in its literary and historical context and they illuminate Coleridge's process of composition and the development of his ideas on Church and State. John Comer's introduction and notes place the work in its literary and historical context and they illuminate Coleridge's process of composition and the development of his ideas on Church and State. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Coleridge began in 1795 a series of public lectures. This volume includes all the printed and manuscript versions of the Bristol lectures in chronological sequence. Among the contents are "Lectures on Revealed Religion, Its Corruption, and Its Political Views" and "Lecture on the Slave-Trade." Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.