Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/122

90 9o THE_ L ONGMAN FAMIL Y. the first-fruits of the future, yet careful not to cast away in his hurry that ponderous ballast of dictionary and compilation, he soon gathered all the young writers of the day within the precincts of his publish- ing fold. Down at Bristol, the ancestral town of both Long- man and Rees, Joseph Cottle had been doing honest service without, we fear, much profit in issuing the earliest works of young men who were to take the highest rank among their fellows. Cottle had pub- lished Southey's Joan of Arc in 1796,- and in 1798 had issued the Lyrical Ballads, the joint composi- tion of Coleridge and Wordsworth. When, in 1800, Longman purchased the entire copyrights of the Bristol firm, at a fair and individual valuation, the Lyrical Ballads were set down in the bill at exactly nothing, and Cottle obtained leave to present the copy- right to the authors. In connection with Cottle and Longman, we must here mention a story that does infinite credit to both. At the very close of the eighteenth century, Southey and Cottle in conjunction prepared an edition of Chatterton's works, to be pub- lished by subscription for the benefit of his sister, whose sight was now beginning to fail her. Hitherto, though much money had been made from the works of the " boy poet," they had been printed only for the emolument of speculators. The edition unfortunately proved a failure, but Longman and Rees entered into a friendly arrange- ment with Southey, and he was able to report in 1804 that Mrs. Newton lived to receive 184 15^. from the profits, when, as she expressed it, she would otherwise have wanted bread. Ultimately, Mary Ann Newton, the poet's niece, received about 600, the fruits of the