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 V - Thomas Poole's library and the Stowey Book Society
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
Thomas Poole's library
Remarkably little is known of Poole's library. He seldom refers to his books in his letters, and only one or two are mentioned in the letters of his friends and acquaintances - as Whalley says, ‘Poole's library as a whole has vanished almost without trace’ (CC Marginalia i p. lxxvii). We know that Poole read widely in Latin and French; in a letter to Samuel Purkis, 23 August 1794, he declared: ‘I, wishing to be perfectly familiar with French, and to increase my knowledge of Latin, seldom read a book out of one or other of those languages’ (Sandford i 91). This was still the case in April 1796, when he remarked to Henrietta Warwick:
L' Emile de Rousseau, for example - what a book is there! ‘Comme il pense et comme il fait penser,’ as has been well said; but not only this book but many others which I could recommend you, if you read French. I have lately perused with much delight La Citoyenne Roland. Learn French, I pray, and you may make even your learning the language the vehicle of much solid instruction. (Sandford i 167; his italics)
I have attempted to identify some of the books owned by Poole in the year 1797-8:
1. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 1792–1809
In the Introduction to the first volume of Coleridge's Marginalia, Whalley quotes a Sotheby sale catalogue of 1908 in which these volumes are described:
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. […]
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- Wordsworth's Reading 1770–1799 , pp. 173 - 175Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993