Books

First and only editions, the complete series of the young Coleridge's short-lived radical political journal. Coleridge's journal was issued every eight days to avoid the duty levied on weekly papers. Aside from reports of current affairs, foreign and domestic, it contains 15 poems and 19 prose articles by Coleridge. The journal had a radical bent and was directed against the "profound demoralization of the liberal opposition in the face of the highly effective 'Gagging Acts' (which tightened the law on treason and banned large political gatherings)" (Kody, p. 145). Coleridge's role as a political journalist was long dismissed, with a "widespread consensus that The Watchman was political-poetic juvenilia" (ibid., p. 147). However, recent scholarship has emphasized the importance of the journal, both for understanding Coleridge's developing political outlook and for its radicalism: "At a point of political crisis, a time when the opposition was wilting under the pressure of the Two Acts and despairing in the face of the continued war policy and the failure of reform and emancipation legislation, Coleridge offered the hope of a political theology that combined high-mind denunciations of instituted power with an emphasis on the political virtue of self-emptying, or kenosis, modeled on the figure of Christ, from the sight of which the abusers of power would be shamed into repentance" (ibid, p. 150). Public reception was not overwhelming, and The Watchman was finally canceled after ten numbers, with Coleridge's simple statement that it did "not pay for expenses". Coleridge's subscribers came from different constituencies - radicals, metropolitan Whigs, non-conformist Christians, and agnostics: "Coleridge tried to adapt his political theology to each, but ended up offending all" (ibid., p. 153). Ashley I p. 196; Crane & Kaye, 916; ESTC P2094 (issue number 1 here in setting B, no established priority of the issue); Haney 5; Tinker 677; Wise 7. Michael John Kody, "Coleridge as Editor: The Watchman and The Friend", in The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2012. Ten parts in a single vol., octavo (212 x 131 mm). Early 19th-century green half sheep, spine lettered in gilt, marbled sides. Housed in a black cloth flat-back box by the Chelsea Bindery. Front pastedown with the ownership inscription of Charles De La Pryme (1815-1899), lawyer & author, who corresponded with Dickens & Michael Faraday; also with the bookplate of Rowland Edmund Prothero (1851-1937), President of the Board of Agriculture from 1916 to 1919; old typed copy of the article on The Watchman loosely inserted. Joints and extremities discreetly restored. The first leaf browned with a tiny burn hole with loss to one letter, else contents clean, leaf Q1 loosening at the head. A very good copy.