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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The poem is one of the central works of British Romantic literature and remains Coleridge’s longest major poem.

Coleridge wrote it in 1797–98, and it first appeared anonymously in the 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads, the groundbreaking collection he published with William Wordsworth. The poem follows an old sailor who stops a Wedding-Guest and recounts a disastrous sea voyage involving an albatross, supernatural forces, and a long moral punishment.

Its narrative combines ballad traditions with dreamlike symbolism, repetition, shifting moods, and striking descriptions of the natural world. The mariner’s suffering begins after he shoots the albatross without an apparent reason, and the poem ultimately links spiritual recovery with recognition of the value of living things.

Readers often associate the poem with Wordsworth because he was Coleridge’s collaborator on Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth contributed several poems and helped shape the volume, but Coleridge wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.