On this day in 1797 William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge began a walking holiday in the Quantock Hills of Somerset, during which they would conceive "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." The original idea was to produce a gothic pot-boiler, something to suit the popular magazines, and to help pay for their vacation. "Much the greatest part of the story was Coleridge's invention," Wordsworth later wrote, though among his own contributions was the idea that the inciting incident should involve the killing of an albatross in the South Sea, for which "the tutelary Spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime ... FULL STORY »
