Robert Southey

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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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Other Life Event William Wordsworth
WW was appointed Poet Laureate a couple of weeks after the death of Robert Southey (he had initially declined the position on the grounds that he would find it hard to write to order).
Moorman, Mary. William Wordsworth: A Biography. Clarendon Press.
2: 558-9, 559n4
Friends, Associates Mary Wollstonecraft
At this time MW 's achievements were admired by Southey , Coleridge , and many English Jacobins who felt themselves oppressed. Her friends included Elizabeth Inchbald , Mary Robinson , and more warmly Eliza Fenwick
Literary responses Anna Jane Vardill
In September 1819 the European Magazine carried a poem in praise of AJV , in which various Muses compete for possession of her.
Axon, William E. A., and Ernest Hartley Coleridge. “Anna Jane Vardill Niven, the Authoress of ’Christobell,’ the Sequel to Coleridge’s ’Christabel.’ With a Bibliography. With an Additional Note on ’Christabel’”. Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, Vol.
2nd series 28
, pp. 57-88.
65-6
In 1821 Alfred Beauchamp , editor of the Magazine, praised...
Literary responses Melesina Trench
Before publishing MT 's private writings, her son showed them to Edward FitzGerald . Fitzgerald responded positively, judging them the equal of published letters by the writers Horace Walpole and Robert Southey . He showed...
Literary responses Elizabeth Tollet
ET 's reputation persisted for some time after her death. Mary Scott praised her highly in The Female Advocate, 1774. John Duncombe (though her posthumous publication was too late for inclusion in his Feminiad...
Literary responses Jane Taylor
Most famous and beloved of all the contents of these books is undoubtedly Jane's The Star, better known as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, sometimes classed as a nursery rhyme, which first appeared in...
Intertextuality and Influence Jane Taylor
Poetry and Reality was written, so the Critical Review maintained, to combat the deistic tendencies of Robert Southey 's juvenile writings.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
5th ser. 4 (1816): 274-5
The Squire's Pew, probably JT 's best-known poem...
Literary responses Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
De Staël is said to have had France read to her on her deathbed, with approbation.
Campbell, Mary. Lady Morgan: The Life and Times of Sydney Owenson. Pandora.
149
Her lover Benjamin Constant defended Morgan from attack, and Morgan's own friend Lady Charleville , who had previously...
Friends, Associates Agnes Strickland
They began to build a network of literary friends and potential supporters: Thomas Campbell , Robert Southey , Charles Lamb , editor William Jerdan , and even more helpfully women like Barbara Hofland , Jane
Friends, Associates Germaine de Staël
In Regency England GS met Coleridge , Southey , and Byron . Jane Austen , however, made a point of avoiding her.
Winegarten, Renee. Mme de Staël. Berg.
74, 76
Intertextuality and Influence Harriet Smythies
In a critical preface HS reveals her gender though not her name. She opens by invoking the author of Rienzi (either, Mary Russell Mitford or Edward Bulwer Lytton ). The two groups of lovers and...
Friends, Associates Charlotte Smith
She also at this period met and impressed Robert Southey .
Fletcher, Loraine. Charlotte Smith: A Critical Biography. Macmillan.
289
Dedications Catherine Sinclair
CS published, this time in Edinburgh through William Whyte and Company , a book of much the same genre as her travel writings, Scotch Courtiers and the Court: dedicated to the poet laureate.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
786 (19 November 1842): 984-5
Reception Lydia Howard Sigourney
She was deservedly criticised for printing in this book the text of a private letter from Caroline Bowles which revealed how much mental confusion Bowles's husband, Robert Southey , suffered in his last years.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
42
Education Mary Sewell
At the age of fifteen she ceased regular study, and began reading on her own. She spent much of the time at Friends ' meetings going over passages from Byron , Southey , Moore ...

Timeline

: One of the best-known poems of John Skelton,...

Writing climate item

Autumn1498

One of the best-known poems of John Skelton , The Bowge of Courte, probably dates from this season. It was printed by Wynkyn de Worde the following year.

By 18 September 1794: By this date Coleridge claimed to have written...

Writing climate item

By 18 September 1794

By this date Coleridge claimed to have written one of the two sonnets attributed to him this year about the scheme for establishing Pantisocracy (a utopian community) in America.

By June 1796: Samuel Taylor Coleridge compiled a booklet...

Writing climate item

By June 1796

Samuel Taylor Coleridge compiled a booklet titled Sonnets from Various Authors: four each by himself, Southey , Charles Lamb , and Charles Lloyd , two by Charlotte Smith , and one each by seven more writers including Anna Seward .

1798: Thomas Robert Malthus anonymously published...

Building item

1798

Thomas Robert Malthus anonymously published in LondonAn Essay on the Principle of Population, which later attached his name to the birth control movement.

June 1816: Lady Isabella King opened at Bailbrook House...

Building item

June 1816

Lady Isabella King opened at Bailbrook House near Bath a communal home for single gentlewomen (or Protestant nunnery): a project going back to Mary Astell , which King picked up from Sarah Scott 's Millenium Hall.

May 1819, May 1820: These months were scheduled for the removal...

National or international item

May 1819, May 1820

These months were scheduled for the removal of thousands of subsistence farmers and their families from the Highland estates of Lord and Lady Stafford (later the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland ) in the Sutherland...

October 1822: Byron published The Vision of Judgment (written...

Writing climate item

October 1822

Byron published The Vision of Judgment (written around the previous summer) in The Liberal, a journal which he and Leigh Hunt briefly published at Pisa.

January 1823: Charles Lamb published the first volume of...

Writing climate item

January 1823

Charles Lamb published the first volume of his Essays of Elia, which had been appearing regularly since August 1820 in the London Magazine.

May 1837: Thomas Noon Talfourd, MP for Reading, author,...

Writing climate item

May 1837

Thomas Noon Talfourd , MP for Reading, author, and friend of the literati, began his campaign to extend the length of copyright.

Texts

Southey, Robert. A Vision of Judgement. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821.
Southey, Robert. History of Brazil. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1819.
Southey, Robert, and Caroline Bowles. “Introduction”. The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles, edited by Edward Dowden, Hodges, Figgis, 1881, p. vi - xxxii.
Southey, Robert, and John Jones. “Introduction, with Observations on Uneducated Poets”. Attempts in Verse, by John Jones, an Old Servant, John Murray, 1831.
Southey, Robert. Joan of Arc. Printed by Bulgin and Rosser, for Joseph Cottle, 1796.
Southey, Robert. Madoc. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1805.
Southey, Robert, and Caroline Bowles. Robin Hood, A Fragment. W. Blackwood and Sons, 1847.
Southey, Robert. Roderick, the Last of the Goths. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1814.
Southey, Robert, editor. Specimens of the Later English Poets. Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1807.
Southey, Robert. Thalaba the Destroyer. T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1801.
Southey, Robert, and Caroline Bowles. The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles. Editor Dowden, Edward, Hodges, Figgis, 1881.
Southey, Robert. The Curse of Kehama. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1810.
Southey, Robert. The Life of Nelson. John Murray, 1813.
Southey, Robert, and Charles Cuthbert Southey. The Life of the Rev. Andrew Bell. Editor Bowles, Caroline, J. Murray, 1844.
Southey, Robert. Wat Tyler. Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1817.