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.
After the death of his first wife, Edith Fricker
, in 1838, Robert Southey
proposed to CB
. The original Dictionary of National Biography called her acceptance of his offer the most momentous step of her life.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Family and Intimate relationships
Sara Coleridge
SC
's father-in-law initially objected to the match, primarily for economic reasons.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, and Sara Coleridge. Sara Coleridge, a Victorian Daughter: Her Life and Essays. Yale University Press.
35, 47
When he did come to terms with the union, the couple then had to wait until Henry completed his studies in...
Family and Intimate relationships
Caroline Bowles
CB
was too old to have children with Robert Southey
, and the children of his first marriage were not disposed to welcome her warmly. Virginia Blain
speculates that their marriage was not consummated. Southey's...
Family and Intimate relationships
Caroline Bowles
But her relations with Southey
's other children were strained, especially with his youngest daughter, Kate
. Kate and her siblings Bertha
and Cuthbert
(who gives Bowles only slight mention in his edition of Southey
Family and Intimate relationships
Caroline Bowles
Robert Southey
died in March 1843, the immediate cause being typhus.
Blain
provides varying dates of death for Southey
throughout her biography of CB
, including the 20th and the 23rd of March. Most sources...
Friends, Associates
Mary Maria Colling
It was, said Bray, four or five years after their first meeting before Colling took the decisive action of revealing some of her poems. Bray made contact for her with Caroline Bowles
as well as...
Friends, Associates
Germaine de Staël
In Regency England GS
met Coleridge
, Southey
, and Byron
. Jane Austen
, however, made a point of avoiding her.
Holford seems to have cared about making influential friends, and succeeded in doing so although she lived in the provinces. She established a correspondence with Sir Walter Scott
, and although their relationship got off...
Friends, Associates
Joanna Baillie
She met Wordsworth
and Southey
in the Lake District in 1808, and was corresponding with Wordsworth by 1812.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
1: 240
Carhart, Margaret S. The Life and Work of Joanna Baillie. Archon Books.
23
He named her his ideal English [sic] gentlewoman.
Carhart, Margaret S. The Life and Work of Joanna Baillie. Archon Books.
57
It was about the same...
Friends, Associates
Ann Batten Cristall
ABC
may have met the poet George Dyer
through her brother; Dyer visited at Joshua's London lodgings and had a platonic affection for Elizabeth Cristall, who was living with her brother around 1795.
Roget, John Lewis. A History of the Old Water-Colour Society. Longmans, Green.
1:190, 189
Friends, Associates
Lady Eleanor Butler
Among their many visitors (apart from the local gentry, with whom they duly established links), close friends included Anna Seward
, Henrietta Maria Bowdler
(who wrote mock-flirtatiously of LEB
as her veillard [sic] or old...
Friends, Associates
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Her biographer William McCarthy, speculating on causes for this reversal of former admiration, mentions Coleridge's painful feelings for his mother and his wife, his leaving the Dissenters for the Church of England, and the predominance...