Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Caroline Bowles
-
Standard Name: Bowles, Caroline
Birth Name: Caroline Bowles
Pseudonym: C
Pseudonym: E
Pseudonym: A
Pseudonym: The Author of Ellen Fitzarthur
Pseudonym: The Authoress of Ellen Fitzarthur
Pseudonym: Baroness de Katzleben
Married Name: Caroline Southey
Used Form: Mrs Caroline Southey
Used Form: Mrs Southey
Used Form: Caroline Bowles Southey
Used Form: Caroline Southey
Used Form: the author of Solitary Hours
CB
was a nineteenth-century poet, essayist, and writer of prose fiction. She published extensively in periodicals, particularly Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, and her works were often collected in volume form. Her verse is sometimes sentimental but can also be humorous and satirical. Her oeuvre includes children's literature, reviews, and verse autobiography. She was popular during her day but has since received little attention, except in her capacity as second wife of Poet Laureate Robert Southey
.
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
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...
Literary responses
Camilla Crosland
CC
enjoyed moderate success during her life. Her writings earned her a modest income (in the 1840s it was about fifty pounds a year) and the critics were generally complimentary.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
A review in the Morning...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Gaskell
Fallen women were by then a cultural obsession. Caroline Bowles
had treated the subject in Ellen Fitzarthur (1820). Thomas Hood
had depicted both the exploitation of seamstresses in The Song of the Shirt (1843) and...
Education
Dora Greenwell
Thereafter, she taught herself, studying philosophy, Latin, German, Italian, French, political economy, and theology.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
199
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Dorling, William. Memoirs of Dora Greenwell. James Clarke.
She initially wrote this piece to support the Royal Albert Asylum for Idiots
and to raise awareness surrounding the issue of physical and mental disabilities. She called her work for the Asylum a labour of...
Publishing
Felicia Hemans
FH
's poems regularly appeared in periodicals, including The New Monthly Magazine from 1823. Publishing with Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine from 1827, she asked William Blackwood
to match her rate of more than a pound per...
Among much critical condemnation of The Seven Temptations (and particular harshness from William Jerdan
),
Woodring, Carl Ray. Victorian Samplers: William and Mary Howitt. University of Kansas Press.
32
the Athenæum acknowledged that we have gone through the whole volume with sincere pleasure, and judged that MH
exhibited...
Dedications
Mary Howitt
The work was dedicated to Caroline Bowles
, with whom MH
's sometimes shaky friendship was currently flourishing.
Woodring, Carl Ray. Victorian Samplers: William and Mary Howitt. University of Kansas Press.
77
Its year-date comes from the copy in the Osborne Collection
at Toronto, and the narrower...
Anthologization
L. E. L.
LEL's poetry was included in Christian Isobel Johnstone
's 1842 Rational Reading Lessons for children, and in 1879 in Louisa Anne Meredith
's Our Island Home, A Tasmanian Sketch Book, alongside other work by...
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
death
Robert Southey
RS
, Poet Laureate, died at Greta Hall, Keswick, Cumberland, after a long decline; he had married Caroline Bowles
(a long-time correspondent) four years earlier.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Bowles, Caroline. Autumn Flowers and Other Poems. Saxton, Peirce, 1844.
Bowles, Caroline. Chapters on Churchyards. W. Blackwood, 1829.
Southey, Robert, and Caroline Bowles. “Introduction”. The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles, edited by Edward Dowden, Hodges, Figgis, 1881, p. vi - xxxii.
Bowles, Caroline. “La petite Madelaine”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
30
, pp. 205-27.
Southey, Robert, and Caroline Bowles. Robin Hood, A Fragment. W. Blackwood and Sons, 1847.
Bowles, Caroline. Solitary Hours. W. Blackwood; T. Cadell, 1826.
Bowles, Caroline. Tales of the Factories. William Blackwood; T. Cadell, 1833.
Bowles, Caroline. The Birth-Day. W. Blackwood, 1836.
Bowles, Caroline, and George Cruikshank. The Cat’s Tail. Blackwood; T. Cadell, 1831.
Southey, Robert, and Caroline Bowles. The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles. Editor Dowden, Edward, Hodges, Figgis, 1881.
Bowles, Caroline. “The Early Called”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
37
, pp. 82 - 94; 196.
Southey, Robert, and Charles Cuthbert Southey. The Life of the Rev. Andrew Bell. Editor Bowles, Caroline, J. Murray, 1844.
Bowles, Caroline. “The Little Brook and the Star”. Literary Souvenir, pp. 289-04.
Bowles, Caroline. The Poetical Works of Caroline Bowles Southey. W. Blackwood and Sons, 1867.
Bowles, Caroline. The Select Literary Works, Prose and Verse, of Mrs. Caroline Southey. S. Andrus and Son, 1851.
Bowles, Caroline. The Widow’s Tale and Other Poems. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1822.
Bowles, Caroline. “The Young Grey Head”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
53
, pp. 202-8.
Bowles, Caroline. “This Time Two Years”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.
41
, pp. 752-61.
Bowles, Caroline. “To the Author of ’The Shepherd’s Calendar’”. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.