The Rime of the Ancient Mariner that the poem may have been inspired by the voyage of Thomas James into the Arctic. According to William Wordsworth, the poem was inspired while Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Wordsworth's sister Dorothy were on a walking tour through the Quantock Hills in Somerset. The discussion had turned to a book that Wordsworth was reading, "A Voyage Round The World by Way of the Great South Sea" (1726) by Captain George Shelvocke. In the book, a melancholy sailor, Simon Hatley, shoots a black albatross: As they discussed Shelvocke's book, Wordsworth proffers the following developmental critique to Coleridge, which importantly contains a reference
Doldrums of days or weeks. Colloquially, the "doldrums" are a state of inactivity, mild depression, listlessness, or stagnation. The word may be derived from "dold," an archaic term meaning "stupid", and "-rum(s)", a noun suffix found in such words as "tantrum." The doldrums are notably described in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798), in Patrick O'Brian's novel "Desolation Island" (1978), and in Laura Hillenbrand's non-fiction book "" (2010). Additionally, the Doldrums are a fictional place in Norton Juster's novel "The Phantom Tollbooth" (1961). Noel Gallagher used the term to describe a woman stuck in the decade