Caroline Bowles

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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 .

Milestones

6 December 1786

The future poet CB was born, an only child, at Buckland Manor near Lymington in Hampshire.
Scholar Virginia Blain discusses the confusion surrounding CB 's date and place of birth. The various dates given in reference books (1787 in the Feminist Companion, for instance) stem from the fact that CB 's baptism did not take place until January of the following year.
Blain, Virginia. Caroline Bowles Southey, 1786-1854. Ashgate.
13
Blain, Virginia. Caroline Bowles Southey, 1786-1854. Ashgate.
13
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
116: 332

1820

CB anonymously published her first book, the narrative poem Ellen Fitzarthur: A Metrical Tale.
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.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

1836

Under her own name (for the first time) CB published her autobiographical The Birth-Day, A Poem in Three Parts, to which are added, Occasional Verses.
Blain, Virginia. “Anonymity and the Discourse of Amateurism: Caroline Bowles Southey Negotiates Blackwoods 1820-1847”. Victorian Journalism, edited by Barbara Garlick and Margaret Harris, Queensland University Press, pp. 1-18.
12
Blain, Virginia. Caroline Bowles Southey, 1786-1854. Ashgate.
120

15 October 1850

CB wrote to Alexander Blackwood reminding him of the late Robert Blackwood 's promise to reprint her uncollected prose.
Blain, Virginia. Caroline Bowles Southey, 1786-1854. Ashgate.
213

20 July 1854

CB , poet, died at Buckland Cottage in Lymington, Hampshire.
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
(September 1854): 309
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
116: 341

Biography

Birth and Family

6 December 1786

The future poet CB was born, an only child, at Buckland Manor near Lymington in Hampshire.
Scholar Virginia Blain discusses the confusion surrounding CB 's date and place of birth. The various dates given in reference books (1787 in the Feminist Companion, for instance) stem from the fact that CB 's baptism did not take place until January of the following year.
Blain, Virginia. Caroline Bowles Southey, 1786-1854. Ashgate.
13
Blain, Virginia. Caroline Bowles Southey, 1786-1854. Ashgate.
13
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
116: 332