ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the impact and influence of the network which was centred on Joseph Cottle and his shop during the mid to late 1790s. It examines how and with what effects, Ann Yearsley came to be associated with the Bristol network as its participants prepared to usher in a new age in British poetry. In 1793 Yearsley established a circulating library at the Colonnade in Bristol’s Hotwells. Poetry given over to longing descriptions of beautiful rural bowers in Clevedon is, it seems to be implied, a ‘cultural luxury’, the sort of writing which a Bristol citizen might buy with the ‘idle gold’ in his pocket. In ‘Bristol Elegy’, Yearsley explores the aftermath of a violent clash between what are represented as a repressive ruling body and a vulnerable and innocent people. The representation of Bristol as a city of cultural philistines bears more than a passing resemblance to a poem by another member of Cottle’s circle, Robert Lovell.
