Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Read somewhere earlier that Coleridge himself wrote some 18 versions

According to Wordsworth, the poem was inspired while Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Wordsworth's sister Dorothy were on a walking tour through the Quantock Hills in Somerset.[6] The discussion had turned to a book that Wordsworth was reading,[7] that described a privateering voyage in 1719 during which a melancholy sailor, Simon Hatley, shot a black albatross.


Commemorative statue at Watchet, Somerset: the albatross hangs
on a rope looped around the ancient mariner's neck.

"Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung."[3]:?lines 139–142?

As they discussed Shelvocke's book, Wordsworth proffered the following developmental critique to Coleridge, which importantly contains a reference to tutelary spirits: "Suppose you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the south sea, and the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime."[6] By the time the trio finished their walk, the poem had taken shape.

Bernard Martin argues in The Ancient Mariner and the Authentic Narrative that Coleridge was also influenced by the life of Anglican clergyman John Newton, who had a near-death experience aboard a slave ship.[8]

The poem may also have been inspired by the legends of the Wandering Jew, who was forced to wander the earth until Judgement Day for a terrible crime, found in Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer, M. G. Lewis' The Monk (a 1796 novel Coleridge reviewed), and the legend of the Flying Dutchman.[9][10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rime_of_the_Ancient_Mariner#Inspiration_for_the_poem

Here

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.[19](pp?128–130) He regarded revision as an essential part of creating poetry.[19](p?138) The first published version of the poem was in Lyrical Ballads in 1798. The 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 Coleridge's Sibylline Leaves anthology included a new version with an extensive marginal gloss, written by the poet. The last version he produced was in 1834.[20][19](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. 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.[19](pp?128–129,?134)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rime_of_the_Ancient_Mariner#Inspiration_for_the_poem