The New International Encyclopædia/Cottle, Joseph

COT′TLE, Joseph (1770-1853). An English publisher, born probably in Gloucestershire. He opened a bookshop in Bristol and was instrumental in publishing some of the first poems of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. He remained in business from 1791 to 1799. After his retirement he produced several volumes of poetry, such as Malvern Hills (1798); John the Baptist (1801); Messiah (1815), which awoke the satire of Byron. His Early Recollections, Chiefly Relating to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1837), with a second edition under the title Reminiscences of Coleridge and Southey (1847), contains interesting information on the early lives of Coleridge and Southey, but is disfigured by many details that show Cottle himself in an unpleasant light.