Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Robert Southey
-
Standard Name: Southey, Robert
Robert Southey was a Romantic poet, one of the Lake Poets with Wordsworth
and Coleridge
. In addition to epics, ballads, and other verse, he penned several plays and contributed regularly to the ToryQuarterly Review. His prose works, for which he was celebrated during his lifetime, were primarily historical, ecclesiastical,and biographical, in addition to travel writing. He also produced translations (from French and Spanish), editions, and anthologies. He enjoyed an excellent reputation in his day, and for his last thirty years of life served as Poet Laureate.
In her last years AS
availed herself of the services of a Miss Fern
as a (presumably paid) companion.
Ashmun, Margaret. The Singing Swan. Yale University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press.
244-6
She had struck up an acquaintance with the young Walter Scott
(who sent some of...
Friends, Associates
Caroline Bowles
CB
rarely travelled far from her home in Lymington. After the death of her old nurse in 1824, she lived alone. Alfred H. Miles
speculates that her parents' deaths tended to strengthen her nervous...
Friends, Associates
Anna Eliza Bray
AEB
and her husband
entertained the poet Robert Southey
and his son at their house.
Bray, Anna Eliza. Autobiography of Anna Eliza Bray. Editor Kempe, John A., Chapman and Hall.
307
Friends, Associates
Anne Grant
At about this time her friends included Robert Southey
, Joanna Baillie
, and Eliza Fletcher
. With the last-named her warm and close personal friendship triumphed over their opposing politics (Grant being a Tory...
A Christian and political radical, STC
associated with William Godwin
and Robert Southey
. William Wordsworth
wrote of him on 21 March 1796, I saw but little of him. I wished indeed to have seen...
Friends, Associates
Anna Eliza Bray
Two days later, AEB
briefly met Robert Southey
for the first time in person in London. They had been corresponding for some years after he received a review copy of her novel The Protestant.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
116: 52
Bray, Anna Eliza. Autobiography of Anna Eliza Bray. Editor Kempe, John A., Chapman and Hall.
292-3
Friends, Associates
Mary Hays
After Wollstonecraft's death, and Fenwick's departure from England, it seems unlikely that MH
found female friends to replace them, though she knew well such people as Elizabeth Inchbald
, Anna Letitia Barbauld
, and Charles
Friends, Associates
Hannah More
Many of her later friends were at least a generation younger than she was. She met many members of the Clapham Sect
in the 1790s, of whom Henry Thornton
and his daughter Marianne
became particularly...
Friends, Associates
Anna Eliza Bray
Four years later, when Southey
's health was in decline, his recently-married second wife, the poet Caroline Bowles
, struck up a correspondence with AEB
. This relationship by letter lasted for fourteen years, although...
Friends, Associates
Charlotte Smith
She also at this period met and impressed Robert Southey
.
Fletcher, Loraine. Charlotte Smith: A Critical Biography. Macmillan.
289
Health
Mary Matilda Betham
MMB
had some kind of general breakdown of health whose beginning Ernest Betham dates to about 1818 (though she seems to have been well when her Vignettes: in Verse appeared this year). Robert Southey
reported...
Health
Mary Maria Colling
Anna Eliza Bray
later wrote that her friend had a nervous temperament.
Bray, Anna Eliza, and Mary Maria Colling. “Letters to Robert Southey”. Fables and Other Pieces in Verse by M.M. Colling, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, pp. 1-85.
8
In a letter to Robert Southey
, Bray reported that Colling admitted to being assailed by envy and malice, on account...
Instructor
Sara Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ensured that his sons received formal schooling, but neglected Sara. Remaining at Greta Hall in her father's absence, she was pushed by her mother early on to study regularly and rigorously.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, and Sara Coleridge. Sara Coleridge, a Victorian Daughter: Her Life and Essays. Yale University Press.
