# Is "Lyrical Ballads" by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Biggs and Cottle for T. N. Longman, Bristol, 1798) is identified by: First edition, 1798, published anonymously — neither Wordsworth's nor Coleridge's name appears. English is the original language and 1798 is the true first year; the precedence question here is between two title-page issues of one edition, not between countries.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition, 1798, published anonymously — neither Wordsworth's nor Coleridge's name appears
- The sheets were printed at Bristol by Biggs and Cottle over the summer of 1798 for Joseph Cottle, who had bought the copyright from Wordsworth, and the earliest title-page imprint reads "Bristol: Printed by Biggs and Cottle, for T. N. Longman, Paternoster-Row, London
- Foolscap octavo, 210 pp., printed on good wove paper
- The cardinal internal point is the Lewti cancel: after printing was finished, Coleridge's "Lewti" was removed — it had already appeared over his name in a newspaper and would have broken the volume's anonymity — and replaced by "The Nightingale", the contents leaf and signatures D8 and E1-2 being cancelled so that three leaves of "Lewti" gave way to four of "The Nightingale"
- This substitution produces the diagnostic pagination break: two pages are numbered 69, and printer's mark E is absent from p
- 65 where it should fall
- Publisher imprint reads Biggs and Cottle for T. N. Longman, Bristol

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
| Publisher | Biggs and Cottle for T. N. Longman, Bristol |
| Year | 1798 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First edition, 1798, published anonymously — neither Wordsworth's nor Coleridge's name appears |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition, 1798, published anonymously — neither Wordsworth's nor Coleridge's name appears. The sheets were printed at Bristol by Biggs and Cottle over the summer of 1798 for Joseph Cottle, who had bought the copyright from Wordsworth, and the earliest title-page imprint reads "Bristol: Printed by Biggs and Cottle, for T. N. Longman, Paternoster-Row, London. 1798". Foolscap octavo, 210 pp., printed on good wove paper. The cardinal internal point is the Lewti cancel: after printing was finished, Coleridge's "Lewti" was removed — it had already appeared over his name in a newspaper and would have broken the volume's anonymity — and replaced by "The Nightingale", the contents leaf and signatures D8 and E1-2 being cancelled so that three leaves of "Lewti" gave way to four of "The Nightingale". This substitution produces the diagnostic pagination break: two pages are numbered 69, and printer's mark E is absent from p. 65 where it should fall. A very small number of copies escaped with "Lewti" still present and are the earliest state of all; one British Museum copy, one of about three known, carries two tables of contents, one listing "The Nightingale" and the other "Lewti". The 1798 sheets contain "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere" in its original archaic-spelling text, later revised out.

## Is this the true first?
English is the original language and 1798 is the true first year; the precedence question here is between two title-page issues of one edition, not between countries. First issue: the Bristol/Longman imprint above. Cottle had prepared the title with T. N. Longman's imprint but he and Longman reached no agreement, and within about a fortnight Cottle sold the whole edition of 500 copies — less the few already distributed — to J. and A. Arch of London, who cancelled the title leaf and substituted their own: "London: Printed for J. & A. Arch, Gracechurch-Street. 1798". The book was published in London on 4 October 1798. The Bristol-imprint first issue is the pinnacle and is effectively unobtainable: Sotheby's records that copies of the first issue are notoriously rare and that none are thought to remain in private hands, which makes the Arch (second) issue the earliest form realistically collected — and it is genuinely collected, not a consolation. Both should be named. Precedence of the two imprints has been argued over by Thomas J. Wise, D. F. Foxon, Robert W. Daniel, and James A. Butler and Karen Green, and Foxon in particular speculated about the abnormal "Printed by Biggs and Cottle for T. N. Longman" imprint; the Bristol-first ordering given here is the standard trade and auction position, but a cataloguer should cite the scholarship rather than assert it flatly.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club editions exist for a work of this period. The reprint and "first thus" traps are substantial: the second edition (London: T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1800) is in two volumes, names Wordsworth alone on the title, and adds the celebrated Preface — it is a major book in its own right and the first appearance of the Preface, but it is not the 1798 first, and its later two-volume printings of 1802 and 1805 are commonly miscatalogued as firsts. Copies made up from mixed sheets are recorded, and a first-edition set can legitimately be second issue in one volume and first issue in another. Later 19th- and 20th-century editions and the many modern scholarly and facsimile reprints (including student editions of the 1798 and 1802 texts) reproduce the text only.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Lyrical Ballads* by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/lyrical-ballads
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.