The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Hardcover

Coleridge, Samuel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0785823409 ISBN 13: 9780785823407

Publisher: Chartwell Books, 2008

Synopsis

Suberbly illustrated by Gustave Dore, this lovely hardcover edition of the classic poem is a wonderful addition to any reader's library. Samuel Taylor Coleridge produced nearly all of his best poetry in a two year period, 1797-1798, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan. After writing Ode to Dejection (1802), his farewell to the Muse of Poetry, he wrote few poems and concentrated almost exclusively on literary criticism and political, philosophical, and theological essays.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner relates a nightmarish voyage experienced by a sailor abard a ship beset by supernatural events. The sailor siezes a man who is on his way to a wedding and begins to narrate his epic tale. The wedding guest is at first indignant, but his displeasure soon turns to fascination as he becomes transfixed by the sailor's extraordinary story.

After inexplicably slaying an albatross that guides his ship to safety during a horrific storm, the Mariner incites the fury of vengeful spirits who inflict terrible suffering on the crew. An errie vessel appears bearing the ghostly spectors of Death and Life-in-Death. Death wins the souls of the shipmates and the Mariner is cursed with Life-in-Death. After days of suffering, the Mariner has an epiphany and sees the spirits as beautiful. While his kinship with nature is restored, he is forced to continue roaming the earth, spreading his message of love for God's Creation.  

About this title

From the Back Cover

Gustave Dore's magnificent engravings for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner are among the later works of the great French illustrator. The intensely evocative poem provided Doré with the long-awaited opportunity to convey limitless space on a gigantic scale, and he exploited the poem's fantastic range of atmosphere to the limits of its possibilities. The terrifying space of the open sea, the storms and whirlpools of an unknown ocean, the vast icy caverns of Antarctica, the hot equatorial sea swarming with monsters, all of the amazing visual elements that make Coleridge's masterpiece one of the most exciting and most memorable poems in the English language are unforgettably engraved in Doré's plates.
This edition reproduces all of the plates to perfection, in their original size. The illustrations and the text of the poem appear on facing pages, so that the imaginative kinship of Doré and Coleridge is delightfully evident on every page: the illustrations capture all the moods of the poem in their full intensity, bringing the images evoked by the words into clear visual focus.
Unabridged and slightly rearranged republication of the 1878 American edition. Text slightly amended to conform to the authoritative 1834 edition of the poem.See every Dover book in print atwww.doverpublications.com

From the Inside Flap

Coleridge's own commentary on the fateful story of the bright-eyed ancient mariner, written some years later at a time of renewed religious feeling, is printed alongside the poem.

Edition details

• Publisher: Chartwell Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0785823409
• ISBN 13: 9780785823407
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 112