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Coleridge, and their friend the Bristol bookseller Joseph Cottle settled on a plan that Cottle publish a joint collection of Wordsworth's and Coleridge's poems, Lyrical Ballads. Authorship was to remain anonymous.[3] Printing went forward in Bristol during the summer. The poems printed began with Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere" and concluded with Wordsworth's "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey," and among them was a poem of Coleridge's (based on a juvenile poem by Wordsworth) "Lewti," which had already been published pseudonymously. What resulted bibliographically from the printing was a volume with collation π1 2π1 [A] 8 B-N8 O4(-O4): π1 containing the title: 2π1, the table of contents; [A]1 through O1, the text; O2, a list of errata; and O3, an advertisement of books published jointly by Biggs and Cottle, T. N. Longman, and Lee and Hurst. Apparently just as printing concluded, however, someone—most likely Coleridge—recognized that the true authorship of "Lewti" was public knowledge and that the anonymity of the book was compromised; so "Lewti" was cancelled and replaced by another poem of Coleridge's, "The Nightingale." At much that same moment Wordsworth brought forward a short prefatory essay for the book. The products of these two events, for printing and binding, were four new leaves for "The Nightingale," replacing the three leaves occupied by "Lewti;" three new leaves for Wordsworth's prefatory essay, inserted between title leaf and contents leaf; and a new contents leaf, now following the prefatory essay rather than the title and listing "The Nightingale" instead of "Lewti." Accordingly, "The Nightingale" was printed on a half sheet for gathering as a four, and the prefatory essay and new contents page were likewise printed on a half sheet for gathering as a four; and the

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collation of the revised volume became π1 2π4 [A] 8 B-D8 (-D8) χ4 E8 (-E1, 2) F-N8O4(-O4): π1 containing the title; 2π1, 2, 3 containing the prefatory essay; 2π4 containing the new table of contents; D, χ, and E now incorporating "The Nightingale"; and the rest remaining unaltered. The title pages of the earliest-bound copies known, however, indicate that by the time they were printed Cottle had resigned the office of publisher; for their imprint is, in full, "BRISTOL: | PRINTED BY BIGGS AND COTTLE, | FOR T. N. LONGMAN, PATERNOSTER-ROW, LONDON. | 1798." Cottle's retreat had probably been caused by an intimidating combination of financial ill-health and doubts—possibly induced by Robert Southey—regarding sales; but Longman, although Cottle had undoubtedly approached him, had not yet formally undertaken the publication.

The scene of events widened beyond Bristol in late August when, certainly not before holding the completed Lyrical Ballads in their hands, Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Coleridge set off for Germany. By 28 August William and Dorothy, at least, had reached London, where William planned diplomacy of some sort with Longman. On 5 September Southey wrote about the book to William Taylor of Norwich in phrasing that suggests he thought it well distributed; and by the second week of September copies had been received by London literati and by acquaintances of Cottle and the authors. By mid-September Wordsworth had recognized that Longman would not participate in the enterprise, and, without consulting Cottle, had found a willing publisher in Joseph Johnson (who had published Wordsworth's only earlier books An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches). Cottle by then not only knew about Longman but had probably already sold the edition to the Arch brothers and set about printing a new title page and binding copies for them. On 15 September the uninformed Wordsworth wrote to Cottle from Yarmouth asking him to transfer the edition to Johnson. Next day, none the wiser, he, Dorothy, and Coleridge sailed for Germany. The Arches announced Lyrical Ballads to the public on 4 October. Cottle was to have paid Wordsworth thirty guineas upon completion of printing, but because of his embarrassed circumstances did not complete payment until July 1799.

Copies representing the ideal first Bristol-Longman collation of the book as just described—π1 2π1 [A]8 B-N8 O4(-O4)—are found at Yale University (Beineke Library) and Princeton University. Copies representing the ideal second Bristol-Longman collation as just described—π1 2π4 [A]8 B-D8 (-D8) χ4 E8 (-E1, 2) F-N8 O4 (-O4)—are found at Cornell University; Harvard University (Widener Collection); New York Public Library (Berg Collection); Wellington University (Alexander Turnbull Library). On the recto of the front free end paper of the Harvard copy appears an owner's inscription by a friend of Wordsworth's, John Frederick Pinney, dated at Pinney's home, "Great George Street Bristol, 1798," and on the front pastedown appears a note, apparently in the same hand, "Coleridge's Rime of the Ancyent Marinere"; but how Pinney obtained the book remains uncertain.

Copies representing the ideal first Bristol-Longman collation of the book as just described—π1 2π1 [A]8 B-N8 O4(-O4)—are found at Yale University (Beineke Library) and Princeton University. Copies representing the ideal second Bristol-Longman collation as just described—π1 2π4 [A]8 B-D8 (-D8) π4 E8 (-E1, 2) F-N8 O4 (-O4)—are found at Cornell University; Harvard University (Widener Collection); New York Public Library (Berg Collection); Wellington University (Alexander Turnbull Library). On the recto of the front free end paper of the Harvard copy appears an owner's inscription by a friend of Wordsworth's, John Frederick Pinney, dated at Pinney's home, "Great George Street | Bristol, 1798," and on the front pastedown appears a note, apparently in the same hand, "Coleridge's Rime of the Ancyent Marinere"; but how Pinney obtained the book remains uncertain.

Copies representing the ideal second Bristol-Longman collation except in lacking leaf O3 are at Indiana University (Lilly Library) and Trinity College,

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Cambridge (The Rothschild Library, Cambridge, 1954, item no. 2603 and plate XLVI), and in a private collection, copy presently on deposit at the Pierpont Morgan Library (Rothschild Library, item no. 2602); and another was in a private collection when examined in 1994. The Trinity College copy contains early revision of "The Ancyent Marinere" in the autograph of Coleridge, and one of the leaves containing revision has been rudely folded and torn out—as if used for a memorandum—and later replaced: it is hard to imagine that the rudeness came from anyone but Coleridge, in a copy that he at the time regarded as practically expendable—so, likely to have been in his hands soon after printing. Other Bristol-Longman copies survive incomplete and/or with redundant leaves—one each at the New York Public Library (Berg Collection) and Yale (Beineke Library), and two at the British Library. These four appear to be variously the results of making-do, of bibliophilic preservation, and of jest. This New York Public Library copy evidently once belonged to Coleridge's and Southey's sister-in-law Martha Fricker and was probably presented to her by Coleridge.[4] It is bound in calico-cloth-covered boards in a fashion characteristic of bindings done by members of the Southey family for—although perhaps not exclusively for—what Southey called his "Cottonian Library." It lacks a title leaf but retains the "Lewti" contents leaf, and the body of the book is of the first ideal collation, [A]8 B-N8 O4(-O4).[5] Certainly one of the British Library copies, and probably the Yale copy, were bound deliberately to preserve together both the earlier "Lewti" and later "Nightingale." This British Library copy (C 58 c 12 [1]), which once belonged to Southey, includes the Bristol-Longman title leaf, the "Lewti" contents leaf, also 2π4 (including the "Nightingale" contents leaf), and also a complete D8 including "Lewti," but lacks O3.[6] The Yale copy (In W890 798c) is the same except that it lacks also the "Lewti" contents leaf. The other British Library copy is like ideal-collation "Nightingale" copies except that following page 62 (that is, between D7 and χ1) is inserted a leaf containing Thomas Beddoes' "Domiciliary Verses," which were intended as a parody of the poetic style of the surrounding volume. The leaf was printed and inserted at Beddoes' direction.[7] I have examined all of these books. The

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sheets of at least two of them—that containing Beddoes' verses and that at Cornell—were first gathered by the binder with a "Lewti" contents leaf following the Bristol-Longman title, then altered by substitution of four-leaf 2π for the "Lewti" contents leaf, plainly in a process of conversion of first-collation copies to second-collation: a clear sign that the Longman title was in use, and so almost certainly printed, before 2π4—and, for reasons to be indicated more distinctly below—before χ as well.[8] The volume as finally published by J. and A. Arch is, apart from the title leaf, identical with the second-ideal-collation Bristol-Longman Lyrical Ballads as already described.