One of the most surprising things that has ever been said about the Lyrical Ballads collection was also one of the earliest. Writing to their publisher, Joseph Cottle, in May 1798, Coleridge said:

To the general reader who is familiar with the finished volume, this must appear an extraordinary statement. We are presented with a collection that begins with a long ballad, ends with a long meditative poem and in the interspace comprises a range of various shorter works in different modes, some written in the poet's own voice, one or two not: and yet the authors can apparently agree in regarding it as ‘one work, in kind tho’ not in degree'.

One reason why this must seem strange is that readers of the 1798 volume, then as now, tended to approach new work in terms of what was familiar. An early reviewer commented, for instance, that The Ancient Mariner did not read like any ballad in the English tradition. He was evidently unaware of the new German ballads that were currently being translated into English – though the one or two reviewers who were did not treat the poem much better, regarding it as a failed attempt to imitate a currently fashionable mode.