Which British poet wrote 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The poem was composed in 1797–98 and first published in the 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads, the landmark collection Coleridge produced with William Wordsworth.

Its narrator is an old sailor who stops a Wedding-Guest and recounts a disastrous voyage. After killing an albatross, the mariner and his crew suffer supernatural punishment at sea. The poem explores guilt, fate, isolation, penance, and the spiritual value of all living things.

Coleridge’s work helped establish British Romantic poetry through its supernatural atmosphere, musical language, and imaginative treatment of nature. The original title used the spelling “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere,” and later editions changed the text, including the familiar explanatory glosses added in 1817.

A common mix-up is Wordsworth, who collaborated with Coleridge and contributed several poems to Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth did not write this poem; Coleridge is its sole canonical author.