By the Future Publisher of Lyrical Ballads
Thomas Hutchinson’s Copy
[COTTLE, Joseph.]
Poems, containing John the Baptist. Sir Malcolm and Alla, a Tale, shewing to all the World what Woman’s Love can do. War a Fragment. With a Monody to John Henderson; and a Sketch of his Character.
First edition of this rare text with an important provenance. The Bristol bookseller Joseph Cottle (1770–1853) had been introduced to Coleridge and Southey by Robert Lovell in 1794 when the two poets ‘were in Bristol courting the Fricker sisters and preparing for Pantisocracy (as they called their scheme to marry and set up a community on the Susquehanna River). Cottle generously offered Coleridge and Southey 30 guineas for the copyright of their poems. He offered Southey an additional 50 guineas and fifty copies for Joan of Arc … and Coleridge a guinea and a half for every additional hundred lines of poetry’ (ODNB). Coleridge introduced Cottle to Wordsworth in August 1795, and Lyrical Ballads followed three years later, ensuring his fame as printer and publisher.
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