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.
Southey
left her only £2,000. His children received much larger inheritances. In 1854 her financial situation was eased when she was awarded an annual Civil List
pension of £200. It appears that the pension was...
Wealth and Poverty
Caroline Bowles
In later years, CB
frequently edited her will and always expected to add some matters of trifling moment which may thereafter occur.
Among the bequests, she set aside an annuity of £30 for her...
Violence
Anna Letitia Barbauld
These young men joked together about inflicting physical violence on ALB
: Coleridge
vowed to cut her to the Heart; Southey
wrote that Lamb
ought to set fire to her wig (a fictional object...
Travel
Mary Russell Mitford
On this trip she also visited Bristol and (very briefly) Barnstaple in Devon. In Bath she was haunted (like many visitors after her) by the idea of Jane Austen
characters, and at Bristol by...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Caroline Bowles
She accused William Howitt of treating Southey
unfairly in this book.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sarah Green
M. G. Lewis
is a more complicated case, treated with some nuance. SG
admires The Monk but feels that after that Lewis's real talent was obscured by the baneful influence of German fiction: she agrees...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anna Brownell Jameson
A second section of the Commonplace Book is entitled Literature and Art (and covers Southey
, Arnold
and Thackeray
); a third section is headed Notes on Art.
Johnston, Judith. Anna Jameson: Victorian, Feminist, Woman of Letters. Scolar Press.
46
Textual Production
Anna Eliza Bray
AEB
published A Description of the Part of Devonshire Bordering on the Tamar and the Tavy; Its Natural History in a Series of Letters to Robert Southey, in three volumes.
Kirk, John Foster, and S. Austin Allibone, editors. A Supplement to Allibone’s Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors. J. B. Lippincott.
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge.
Bray, Anna Eliza. Autobiography of Anna Eliza Bray. Editor Kempe, John A., Chapman and Hall.
295
Textual Production
Sara Coleridge
It was published anonymously when SC
was just twenty years old, and was initially attributed to Robert Southey
.
Coleridge, Sara. Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge. Editor Coleridge, Edith, Henry S. King.
27
This work was originally undertaken to assist her brother with his college expenses. However, he...
Textual Production
Mary Matilda Betham
In March 1799 MMB
was apparently working both at some translation (which she suspected would not sell) and a novel. Neither has been identified or is known to have been printed.
Betham, Ernest, editor. A House of Letters. Jarrold and Sons.
61-2
In 1810 Southey
Textual Production
Elizabeth Ham
It was dedicated to the poet Margaret Holford Hodson
(who was at this time seriously ill), and was apparently published by August.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
1: 203
Joanna Baillie's editor Judith Bailey Slagle
dates Baillie's letter about this...
Textual Production
Mary Hays
Thomas Underwood
(of Underwood and Black
's print shop in Fleet Street) agreed to publish a translation by MH
of Ollivier by Jacques Cazotte
(a project suggested to her by Robert Southey
); but this never happened.
Brooks, Marilyn. Letter about Mary Hays to Isobel Grundy.
Hays, Mary. “Chronology and Introduction”. The Correspondence (1779-1843) of Mary Hays, British Novelist, edited by Marilyn Brooks, Edwin Mellen, pp. xv - xx; 1.
xvii
Textual Production
Amelia Opie
AO
was an indefatigable letter-writer. Her surviving correspondence at the Huntington Library
includes 331 letters (1794-1850). Most are written by her to her cousin Eliza (Alderson) Briggs
or her husband; a few are from her...
Textual Production
Mary Maria Colling
The full title reads Fables and other Pieces in Verse . . . With some account of the author, in letters to Robert Southey
Esq. . . . by Mrs. Bray. The dedicatory poem...
Textual Production
Charlotte Brontë
CB
solicited Poet Laureate Robert Southey
's opinion on some poems; he advised her to pursue her proper duties, because Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press.
262
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...
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.
