1800 Map

When the first edition of Lyrical Ballads was published, Coleridge’s opening poem was widely criticised as being unintelligible.  As a result, it was moved from the front to the back of the first volume for the second edition. Coleridge immediately responded to criticism by modernising some of the spelling and by adding an 'Argument' at the front that reads as a summary and clarification of the plot: 'How a Ship, having first sailed to the Equator, was driven by Storms, to the cold Country towards the South Pole; how the Ancient Mariner cruelly, and in contempt of the laws of hospitality, killed a Sea-bird; and how he was followed by many and strange Judgements; and in what manner he came back to his own Country.' Spatially and temporally the 'Argument' exists as a little world of its own ahead of the main poem (shown next to the 'wedding' topos in this visualisation).