The Watchman was a short-lived periodical established and edited by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1796. The first number was promised for 5 February 1796 but actually appeared on 1 March. Published by Coleridge himself, it was printed at Bristol by Nathaniel Biggs,[1] and appeared every eight days to avoid tax.[2] Publication ceased with the tenth number (published 13 May 1796).[3] The publication contained essays, poems, news stories, reports on Parliamentary debates, and book reviews.[4]
The volumes all contain explicitly political material such as the ‘Introductory Essay’, (a history of ‘the diffusion of truth’); the ‘Essay on Fasts’, (attacking the alliance of church and state power); two anti-Godwinian items, ‘Modern Patriotism’ and ‘To Gaius Gracchus’; ‘To the Editor of the Watchman’ (reporting the trials of friends of freedom John Gale Jones and John Binns); and an extract from Coleridge’s lecture ‘On the Slave Trade’.[5] [6]
References
edit- ^ "Charles Lamb: Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters: Contents". www.lordbyron.org.
- ^ Roe, Nicholas. "Coleridge's Watchman Tour". Friends of Coleridge. Coleridge Bulletin. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
- ^ Johnson, S. F., 'Coleridge's The Watchman: Decline and Fall', The Review of English Studies, 1953
- ^ "The Watchman". Archive Org. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
- ^ Perry, Seamus (30 September 1999). Coleridge and the Uses of Division. University of Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 320. ISBN 978-0-19-818397-6. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
- ^ Patton, Lewis. "Excerpt from: The Collected Works Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - The Watchman" (PDF). University of Pennsylvania website. Princeton University Press. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
Further reading
edit- Lewis Patton (ed.) The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. 2: The Watchman, Bollingen series: 75, 1970. ISBN 978-0-691-09719-0