NOTE ON THIS EDITION This book is a reprint of the 1817, London, edition of SIBYLLINE LEAVES, in which "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" appeared for the first time as the acknowledged work of Coleridge. Originally Coleridge planned the collection as the second volume of a work of which the first volume was to contain Biographia Literaria, and accordingly it was printed with the notation "Vol. II" on the signatures; but after Biographia Literaria outgrew the scope of a single volume the plan was abandoned. This and other difficulties with the printers delayed the publication of SIBYLLINE LEAVES for nearly two years after the sheets were printed, a circumstance to which Coleridge refers in his Preface, and again in Chapter XXII of Biographia Literaria. Errors in the text of the first edition present a problem to a any conscientious reprinter of the book. Fortunately, the errors are not numerous, and there is among them a collection of unmistakable typographical mishaps, such as "tbe” for "the." Since these inaccuracies were easy to distinguish, it was determined that the Dolphin Master edition should eliminate them because to reproduce them would certainly not be to reproduce the author's intention, while it would seem to pretend to a kind of reliability-value that feels, when it reaches this extreme, somewhat spurious. There have been no other changes within the poems, all archaisms and idiosyncracies of spelling and punctuation being strictly preserved. The most noticeable adjustment of the printed word of the original appears on the Errata pages at the back of the book. The Errata changes have not been effected in the text, firstly, because they were not effected in the original, and, secondly, because frequently what they refer to are not errors in the usual sense: They are afterthoughts and polishings of Coleridge and it is interesting to have both versions available. But the page and line references of these Errata have had to be reworded to direct the reader to the pertinent passage in this volume. This is necessary because, while the Dolphin Master is a faithful reproduction of the text, with no editing, annotation, or abridgment, it is not a facsimile edition. Typography and design have been altered to meet the demands of modern production methods and the pagination is different. Finally, the misleading notation "Vol. II" does not appear on the signatures of this book. SIBYLLINE LEAVES: Collection of Poems. BY S. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ LONDON: REST FENNER, 23, PATERNOSTER row. 1817. FACSIMILE (reduced) OF THE ORIGINAL TITLE PAGE |