Editing The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (section)

==Versions of the poem==
Coleridge often made changes to his poems and ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' was no exception – he produced at least eighteen different versions over the years.<ref name=stillinger/>{{rp|style=ama|pp= 128–130}} He regarded revision as an essential part of creating poetry.<ref name=stillinger/>{{rp|style=ama|p= 138}} The [[:wikisource:Lyrical Ballads (1798)/The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere|first published version]] of the poem was in ''[[Lyrical Ballads]]'' in 1798. The [[:wikisource:Lyrical Ballads (1800)/Volume 1/The Ancient Mariner|second edition of this anthology in 1800]] included a revised text, requested by Coleridge, in which some of the language and many of the archaic spellings were modernised. He also reduced the title to ''The Ancient Mariner'' but for later versions the longer title was restored. The 1802 and 1805 editions of ''Lyrical Ballads'' had minor textual changes. In 1817 [[:wikisource:Sibylline Leaves (Coleridge)/The Rime of the Ancient Mariner|Coleridge's ''Sibylline Leaves'' anthology]] included a new version with an extensive marginal [[Gloss (annotation)|gloss]], written by the poet. The last version he produced was in 1834.<ref>{{cite book |author-link=Samuel Taylor Coleridge |last=Coleridge |first=S.T. |year=1836 |title=The poetical works of S.T. Coleridge |volume=II |publisher=William Pickering |location=London, UK |pages=1–27 |url=https://archive.org/details/10805513.5096.emory.edu/page/n11/mode/1up}}</ref><ref name=stillinger>{{cite journal |last=Stillinger |first=Jack |year=1992 |title=The multiple versions of Coleridge's poems: How many ''Mariners'' did Coleridge write? |journal=Studies in Romanticism |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=127–146 |doi=10.2307/25600948 |jstor=25600948 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25600948}}</ref>{{rp|style=ama|pp= 127, 130, 134}}

Traditionally literary critics regarded each revision of a text by an author as producing a more authoritative version and Coleridge published somewhat revised versions of the poem in his ''Poetical Works'' anthology editions of 1828, 1829, and lastly in 1834—the year of his death. More recently scholars look to the earliest version, even in manuscript, as the most authoritative but for this poem no manuscript is [[Extant literature|extant]]. Hence the editors of the edition of ''Collected Poems'' published in 1972 used the 1798 version but made their own modernisation of the spelling and they added some passages taken from later editions.<ref name=stillinger/>{{rp|style=ama|pp= 128–129, 134}}

The 1817 edition, the one most used today and the first to be published under Coleridge's own name rather than anonymously, added a new Latin epigraph but the major change was the addition of the gloss that has a considerable effect on the way the poem reads.<ref name=p1912/>{{rp|style=ama|p= 186}}<ref>{{cite web |last=Perry |first=Seamus |date=15 May 2014 |title=An introduction to ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' |website=Discovering Literature: Romantics & Victorians |publisher=[[The British Library]] |url=https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/an-introduction-to-the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner#}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Jack |first=Belinda |date=21 February 2017 |title=Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' and poetic technique |publisher=[[Gresham College]] |pages=4, 5, 10 |url=https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lecture/transcript/download/samuel-taylor-coleridge-the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner-and-poetic-technique}}</ref><ref name=stillinger/>{{rp|style=ama|pp= 130, 134}} Coleridge's grandson [[Ernest Hartley Coleridge|E.H. Coleridge]] produced a detailed study of the published versions of the poem.<ref name=p1912>{{cite book |author-link=Samuel Taylor Coleridge |last=Coleridge |first=S.T. |editor-link=Ernest Hartley Coleridge |editor-last=Coleridge |editor-first=E.H. |year=1912 |title=The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge |volume=I |publisher=The Clarendon Press |location=Oxford |url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924102776576}}<br/>{{cite book |author-link=Samuel Taylor Coleridge |last=Coleridge |first=S.T. |editor-link=Ernest Hartley Coleridge |editor-last=Coleridge |editor-first=E.H. |title=The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge |volume=II |date=1912 |publisher=The Clarendon Press |location=Oxford |url=https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.234638}}</ref> Over all, Coleridge's revisions resulted in the poem losing thirty-nine lines and an introductory prose "Argument", and gaining fifty-eight glosses and a Latin epigraph.<ref name=stillinger/>{{rp|style=ama|p= 134}}

In general the anthologies included printed lists of ''[[Erratum|errata]]'' and, in the case of the particularly lengthy list in ''Sibylline Leaves'', the list was included at the beginning of the volume. Such changes were often editorial rather than merely correcting errors.<ref name=stillinger/>{{rp|style=ama|pp= 131, 139}} Coleridge also made handwritten changes in printed volumes of his work, particularly when he presented them as gifts to friends.<ref name=stillinger/>{{rp|style=ama|pp= 134, 139}}