Career
Coutts.
Through Hunt, Ollier became known to John Keats, and volunteered to publish his first poems (1817). The book did not succeed, however, and Keats quarrelled with him, publishing his subsequent books with Taylor & Hessey. All the subsequent works of Shelley published in his lifetime, except Swellfoot the Tyrant, were brought out by Ollier.
Shelley"s letters to Ollier are published in the Shelley Memorials.
The most important of Ollier"s other publications were the collected works of Charles Lamb and several of Barry Cornwall"s early volumes. In 1819 he published The Literary Pocket Book, in which Shelley"s poem of Marianne"s Dream was first printed.
In 1820 Ollier brought out Ollier"s Literary Miscellany, with an article on the German drama by Julius Hare, and The Four Ages of Poetry by Thomas Love Peacock. The latter provoked Shelley"s A Defence of Poetry, given to Ollier for the second part of the Miscellany, which never appeared.
When Ollier"s business was wound up shortly afterwards, the Defence came into the possession of John Hunt.
He prepared it for publication in The Liberal, but that periodical also expired before it could be published. Ollier became, and long continued as, a literary adviser to Richard Bentley. Ollier died at Old Brompton on 5 June 1859.