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
Coleridge Cottage As well as writing poetry he was a literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. It was while he was living in Nether Stowey that Coleridge wrote "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison", "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", part of "Christabel", and "Frost at Midnight". While writing "Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment", Coleridge was said to have been interrupted by the arrival of a "Person from Porlock". It is unclear whether this really happened or was