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.
CF
's travel writing was first publicly mentioned when Robert Southey
quoted it in his Omniana; or, Horæ Otiosiores (About Everything; or, Leisure Hours) as the work of a lady.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Fiennes, Celia. “Editorial Note and Introduction”. The Illustrated Journeys of Celia Fiennes, edited by Christopher Morris, Macdonald; Webb and Bower, pp. 8-31.
10
Textual Production
Anna Eliza Bray
AEB
published A Description of the Part of Devonshire Bordering on the Tamar and the Tavy; Its Natural History in a Series of Letters to Robert Southey, in three volumes.
Kirk, John Foster, and S. Austin Allibone, editors. A Supplement to Allibone’s Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors. J. B. Lippincott.
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge.
Bray, Anna Eliza. Autobiography of Anna Eliza Bray. Editor Kempe, John A., Chapman and Hall.
295
Textual Production
Sara Coleridge
It was published anonymously when SC
was just twenty years old, and was initially attributed to Robert Southey
.
Coleridge, Sara. Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge. Editor Coleridge, Edith, Henry S. King.
27
This work was originally undertaken to assist her brother with his college expenses. However, he...
Textual Production
Mary Matilda Betham
In March 1799 MMB
was apparently working both at some translation (which she suspected would not sell) and a novel. Neither has been identified or is known to have been printed.
Betham, Ernest, editor. A House of Letters. Jarrold and Sons.
61-2
In 1810 Southey
Textual Production
Elizabeth Ham
It was dedicated to the poet Margaret Holford Hodson
(who was at this time seriously ill), and was apparently published by August.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
1: 203
Joanna Baillie's editor Judith Bailey Slagle
dates Baillie's letter about this...
Textual Production
Mary Hays
Thomas Underwood
(of Underwood and Black
's print shop in Fleet Street) agreed to publish a translation by MH
of Ollivier by Jacques Cazotte
(a project suggested to her by Robert Southey
); but this never happened.
Brooks, Marilyn. Letter about Mary Hays to Isobel Grundy.
Hays, Mary. “Chronology and Introduction”. The Correspondence (1779-1843) of Mary Hays, British Novelist, edited by Marilyn Brooks, Edwin Mellen, pp. xv - xx; 1.
xvii
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anna Brownell Jameson
A second section of the Commonplace Book is entitled Literature and Art (and covers Southey
, Arnold
and Thackeray
); a third section is headed Notes on Art.
Johnston, Judith. Anna Jameson: Victorian, Feminist, Woman of Letters. Scolar Press.
46
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Caroline Bowles
She accused William Howitt of treating Southey
unfairly in this book.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sarah Green
M. G. Lewis
is a more complicated case, treated with some nuance. SG
admires The Monk but feels that after that Lewis's real talent was obscured by the baneful influence of German fiction: she agrees...
Travel
Mary Russell Mitford
On this trip she also visited Bristol and (very briefly) Barnstaple in Devon. In Bath she was haunted (like many visitors after her) by the idea of Jane Austen
characters, and at Bristol by...
Violence
Anna Letitia Barbauld
These young men joked together about inflicting physical violence on ALB
: Coleridge
vowed to cut her to the Heart; Southey
wrote that Lamb
ought to set fire to her wig (a fictional object...
Wealth and Poverty
Caroline Bowles
Southey
left her only £2,000. His children received much larger inheritances. In 1854 her financial situation was eased when she was awarded an annual Civil List
pension of £200. It appears that the pension was...
Wealth and Poverty
Caroline Bowles
In later years, CB
frequently edited her will and always expected to add some matters of trifling moment which may thereafter occur.
