'A splendid celebration of the grizzled figure who "stoppeth one of three" and the tragic artist who created him' - The Times

'There is more about Coleridge's greatest poem here than in any work published in the last quarter-century. I imagine that this book may become a classic of Christian spirituality' - the Tablet

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was only twenty-five when he wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but it turned out to be an astonishingly prescient poem. This tale of a journey that begins in high hopes and good spirits, leads to a profound encounter with darkness, alienation, loneliness and dread, and finally sees its protagonist return home to a renewal of faith and vocation, foreshadowed the shape of Coleridge's own life.

Summoning us to join him on a fantastic voyage through Coleridge's life and work, academic, priest and poet Malcolm Guite draws out the uncanny clarity with which image after image and event after event in the poem became emblems of what Coleridge was later to suffer and discover.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is of course more than just one individual's story: it is also a profound exploration of the human condition and, as Coleridge himself explained, our 'loneliness and fixedness' - a prophetic parable about our place in a natural world that scares us in its immensity yet which we assume we can control. But the poem ultimately offers hope, release and recovery; and Guite also draws out the continuing relevance of Coleridge's life and writing to our own age.

Malcolm Guite, a poet, theologian and song-writer, is the Chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge, where he also teaches for the Divinity Faculty. He lectures widely in England and North America on theology and literature. He has published poetry, theology and literary criticism.

Hodder & Stoughton
www.hodder.co.uk
@HodderBooks @malcolmguite

'The story of Coleridge's life does undoubtedly echo that of his poem; this is a book that provides rewarding rereadings of both' - The Sunday Times

A new biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, shaped and structured around the story he himself tells in his most famous poem, 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'.

Though the 'Mariner' was written in 1797 when Coleridge was only twenty-five, it was an astonishingly prescient poem. As Coleridge himself came to realise much later, this tale - of a journey that starts in high hopes and good spirits, but leads to a profound encounter with human fallibility, darkness, alienation, loneliness and dread, before coming home to a renewal of faith and vocation - was to be the shape of his own life. In this rich new biography, academic, priest and poet Malcolm Guite draws out how with an uncanny clarity, image after image and event after event in the poem became emblems of what Coleridge was later to suffer and discover.

Of course 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' is more than just an individual's story: it is also a profound exploration of the human condition and, as Coleridge says in his gloss, our 'loneliness and fixedness'. But the poem also offers hope, release, and recovery; and Guite also draws out the continuing relevance of Coleridge's life and writing to our own time.

'Forcefully and convincingly argued' - The Telegraph