Author: Cottle, Joseph
Biography:
COTTLE, Joseph (1770-1853: ODNB)
Second son of Robert and Sarah Cottle, born in Bristol; his father was a tailor and draper. A keen reader in school, in 1791 he opened a shop where he sold books, prints, and stationery. With the generosity often associated with booksellers of the eighteenth century, he encouraged his authors by offering financial and practical assistance. In the 1790s he befriended three young men who shared his radical political views--Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth (qq.v.)--and published some of their early works, notably the 1798 Lyrical Ballads. In 1798 he retired as a bookseller, but continued as a publisher and began to spend more time on his own writing. His Malvern Hills (1798) was better received than his epic poems, but even they sold fairly well. He was satirised by Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) and is now remembered chiefly for his indiscreet Early Recollections of Southey and Coleridge (1837). (ODNB 13 May 2018) HJ