Published in 1847 by Joseph Cottle (1770 1853), this work recounts his relationship with Coleridge and Southey, whom he first met in 1794 as a successful bookseller in Bristol. Cottle went on to finance a number of the Romantic poets' publications, including Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads (1798), which is seen as marking the start of Romanticism. A reworking of Cottle's controversial Early Recollections (1837), Reminiscences was criticised upon publication for being exaggerated and misleading, coloured by the breakdown of the author's friendship with the poets, as well as...

The reminiscences of Bristol bookseller Joseph Cottle (1770 1853) have been described as 'unreliable but essential'. The son of a tailor, Cottle was an avid reader, opening a bookshop in 1791. Three years later he was introduced to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, and became the earliest publisher of their works: through them, he also knew Wordsworth, and published the Lyrical Ballads in 1798. He later fell out with all three men, and in 1837 published (despite Southey and Coleridge's family attempting to prevent it) this quickly notorious two-volume work, through which Cottle lost...

The reminiscences of Bristol bookseller Joseph Cottle (1770 1853) have been described as 'unreliable but essential'. The son of a tailor, Cottle was an avid reader, opening a bookshop in 1791. Three years later he was introduced to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, and became the earliest publisher of their works: through them, he also knew Wordsworth, and published the Lyrical Ballads in 1798. He later fell out with all three men, and in 1837 published (despite Southey and Coleridge's family attempting to prevent it) this quickly notorious two-volume work, through which Cottle lost...