The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

This book is an illustrated bilingual Chinese-English collector's edition of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the long narrative poem by the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Comprising seven parts, the poem was written in 1798 and first appeared as the opening poem in Lyrical Ballads, the collaborative collection by Coleridge and William Wordsworth. In the poem, an old sailor stops a guest on his way to a wedding and recounts his experiences at sea: a great ship encounters a storm during its voyage, is driven toward the equator, and drifts into the frozen world of the South Pole; an albatross flies in and perches on the ship, and the old sailor kills it for no reason. Punishment follows: the ship is becalmed on a dead sea without wind or water, the crew members die one by one in strange circumstances, and only the old sailor survives to endure remorse and solitude, until a mysterious pardon and repentance bring him home. Through the old sailor's voice, the poem reveals the powerful and mysterious force of fate, the existential predicaments in which humanity is often trapped, and the unconscious evil that individuals commit out of momentary impulse. This edition, translated by Ye Zi and following the standard 1817 version, includes the translation of the main text, epigraph, and marginal glosses, along with a preface by the American scholar John Livingston Lowes and full-color illustrations by Edward A. Wilson, presented in an oversized hardcover format.