Sara Coleridge the "Essays on his Own Times, by S. T. Coleridge", and the Introduction to the "Biographia Literaria". In 1850, Coleridge discovered a lump in her breast. Her physician decided not to operate, prescribing cod liver oil and opium. Knowing there was no cure, she waited for the disease to take its course. "I live in constant fear," Coleridge wrote, "like the Ancient Mariner with the Albatross hung about his neck, I have a weight always upon me." Shortly before she died she amused herself by writing a little autobiography for her daughter. This, which reaches only to her ninth year,
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket believing the novel was an autobiographical narrative by Pym. In addition to historical sources, Poe was influenced by other writers. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a general influence, and scenes of Pym and Dirk Peters in a cave echo scenes in Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", which many reviewers noted at the time, including London publications such as the "Court Gazette" and the "Torch". The ship of corpses recalls the legend of the "Flying Dutchman", a ship which is cursed and unable to return home. Poe also incorporated the theories of Reynolds and John Cleves