Robert Southey

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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.
Oil painting of Robert Southey from the waist up. He is wearing a black jacket and a white shirt underneath, and he is looking slightly toward the left.

Milestones

12 August 1774

RS , poet, was born in Bristol.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2025, 22 vols. plus supplements.

1801

RS published his narrative poem Thalaba the Destroyer, a metrical romance in two volumes.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.
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.

By late February 1831

In the same year as his anthology of early poetry, RS published Attempts in Verse by John Jones , an old Servant, with an important introduction discussing other uneducated (that is, plebeian), poets.
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

21 March 1843

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, 1908–2025, 22 vols. plus supplements.

Biography

12 August 1774

RS , poet, was born in Bristol.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2025, 22 vols. plus supplements.

From Radical Poet to Conservative Laureate

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