Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Dates of readings
- A Note on texts
- Wordsworth's reading 1770-1799
- Appendix I Possible readings
- Appendix II Wordsworth's Hawkshead and classical educations, and his College examinations at Cambridge
- Appendix III Books purchased for Wordsworth, 1784-6
- Appendix IV Wrangham and his library
- Appendix V Thomas Poole's library and the Stowey Book Society
- Appendix VI Coleridge's Bristol Library borrowings
- Appendix VII Joseph Cottle's Bristol Library borrowings
- Bibliography
- Index
Appendix VI - Coleridge's Bristol Library borrowings
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Dates of readings
- A Note on texts
- Wordsworth's reading 1770-1799
- Appendix I Possible readings
- Appendix II Wordsworth's Hawkshead and classical educations, and his College examinations at Cambridge
- Appendix III Books purchased for Wordsworth, 1784-6
- Appendix IV Wrangham and his library
- Appendix V Thomas Poole's library and the Stowey Book Society
- Appendix VI Coleridge's Bristol Library borrowings
- Appendix VII Joseph Cottle's Bristol Library borrowings
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
There were a number of libraries at Wordsworth's disposal during the annus mirabilis: the Alfoxden House library, Coleridge's library (where he would have found a copy of Anderson's British Poets), Poole's library, and that of Thomas Beddoes in Bristol, where Wordsworth might have found help with his efforts to learn German.
There was also the Bristol Library Society. Wordsworth was not a member of the Society and so nothing was borrowed in his name, but it is possible that Cottle, Azariah Pinney or Coleridge took him there to consult some of the volumes in the Society's King Street reading room. This was mooted first by Beatty:
We know that the record of books borrowed from the library is very imperfect evidence of books read; many must have been perused in the library building in King Street, at the table in comfortable proximity to the Grinling Gibbons fireplace.
(‘“The Borderers” and “The Ancient Mariner”’, TLS [29 Feb. 1936] 184)We can only speculate as to whether Wordsworth, as a guest, read the Society's holdings. On the other hand, we do know what Coleridge borrowed during 1797-8. Whalley's ‘The Bristol Library Borrowings of Southey and Coleridge, 1793-8’, The Library 4 (1949) 114-32, provides the most reliable account of these; a tantalizing but so far undiscussed sidelight is the possibility of Wordsworth having also read them.
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- Wordsworth's Reading 1770–1799 , pp. 176 - 184Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993