Coleridge in Lilliput: The quality of parliamentary reporting in 1800

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Abstract
Coleridge reported three speeches in 1800 for the London Morning Post. His notes and printed reports are collated with all other independent reports, and some simple rules of textual analysis are formulated for evaluating the authenticity of parliamentary reports. A distinction between the scarce but more authentic shorthand or authorial texts and the usual newspaper texts is demonstrated. Yet it is found that a small but significant sprinkling of the salient expressions of the original speakers can be recovered even from newspaper reports. The historical scholar, armed with the method here presented, need not turn with indiscriminate suspicion from all the unsifted ore in the collections of Debrett, Cobbett, or Hansard. As for Coleridge, his three reports represent three degrees of originality. In general he was, as a reporter, simultaneously more faithful and more creative than his professional colleagues.

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