"Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean."
Described by his friend Charles Lamb as "an archangel slightly damaged", Coleridge was deemed a towering genius by many of his contemporaries, and one who, in conversation, had no equal. Fascinated by, among other subjects, psychology, philosophy and chemistry, his mind roamed extravagantly and without restraint, leading Hazlitt to opine that "there is no subject on which he has not touched, none on which he has rested". Yet, while this literary itinerancy left some to lament his refusal to devote himself to verse, Coleridge remains one of English literature's most enduringly popular poets.
From sonnets and ballads to elegies and intimate blank verse, this collection brings together poetry written throughout Coleridge's life, particularly his prolific early years, which saw the composition of poems such as 'Christabel', 'The Eolian Harp' and 'Frost at Midnight'. This volume also includes 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', one of the most popular poems ever written in the English language, and 'Kubla Khan', which highlight Coleridge's gift for suffusing his strange, haunting and captivating verse with unsurpassed musical and rhythmic qualities.
One of the great figures of the Romantic age, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) is known both for his poetry and prose, and for producing Lyrical Ballads with William Wordsworth, a work which revolutionized English poetry. Plagued by debts and laudanum addiction, he left many pieces unfinished, yet his extraordinary influence was felt in literary figures as diverse as Wordsworth, Mary Shelley and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Alma books paperback: 0.7" H x 7.7" L x 5.0" W, 256 pages
MacMillan Collector's Library hardcover: 0.6" H x 3.9" L x 6.0" W, 144 pages
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.
