author
Joseph Cottle
1770–1853
Best known for helping launch some of the biggest names of English Romanticism, this Bristol bookseller and publisher backed early work by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, and William Wordsworth. He also wrote poetry and memoirs of his literary circle, leaving behind a vivid, sometimes controversial record of the age.
1 Audiobook
Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey
by Joseph Cottle
About the author
Born in Bristol in 1770, Joseph Cottle became a bookseller, publisher, and writer whose importance far outweighed his own fame. In the 1790s he opened his business in Bristol and quickly became a generous supporter of young poets, publishing early work by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey and playing a part in the world around Lyrical Ballads.
Cottle was more than a businessman. He wrote poetry himself and moved in the same circles as many of the leading literary figures of the Romantic period. His willingness to encourage new writers helped shape the careers of authors who later became central to English literature.
Later in life, he published memoirs and recollections, especially about Coleridge, that attracted criticism for their frankness. Even so, those writings remain valuable for readers interested in the friendships, tensions, and literary energy of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. He died in 1853.