ABSTRACT
Joseph Cottle (1770-1853) was first introduced to Coleridge in January 1795, when the latter arrived in Bristol. Cottle was a bookseller and publisher who supported Coleridge and Southey through generous advances on their early poems. More than sourness or bitterness at Coleridge’s ingratitude, Cottle’s Early Recollections of him are dominated by this feeling of unjust exclusion. He consistently shows that Coleridge and Southey, for all their gifts and ardour, had feet of clay, ordinary human foibles and extraordinary vanity. Cottle also took it upon himself to bare Coleridge’s addicted soul to the public at large. He gives the most elaborate account of Coleridge’s dependence on opium and, most offensively to Coleridge’s family and defenders, he published Coleridge’s own, rather pathetic letters on the subject. It was his inappropriate candour that put Cottle into a weak position; additionally, his tone was self-regarding and his treatment of the documents was cavalier.
