Frankenstein quotes the poem twice:
- Walton writes that he is going "to the land of mist and snow" but "shall kill no albatross"
- Victor, fleeing his creature, recites the lines about a man who dares not turn his head for the fiend behind him
Mary Shelley heard Coleridge recite it at her father's house as a child. Both stories are told to a listener by a man cursed for a transgression, framed by a polar voyage.