Sunday 7 August 2011

Starting...or not...the Bristol Literary Trail

The start of the Bristol Literary Trail.  Around the corner is St Nicholas Church and this is All Saints Lane.  There is no online map to this trail and it is confusing. For example, "1. Leaving St Nicholas Church in St Nicholas Street (closed to the public), turn right and then left into the High Street, noting the sign for The Rummer."  
The Rummer is actually a pub--or the man who pointed it out to me thinks it is-- and it is in All Saints Lane as above.  The instructions continue as follows: 
This public house (now closed) saw the launch of Coleridge's magazine The Watchman in 1795. Joseph Cottle whose bookshop once stood on the corner of High Street and Corn Street, befriended Southey and Coleridge whilst they were still unknown, offering to publish their poems for thirty guineas. Wordsworth finished one of his poems in the back room of Cottle's shop. There has been some speculation that Coleridge took inspiration for his epic The Ancient Marina from Captain Thomas James who voyaged from Bristol to Hudson Bay in 1631.

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