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.
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...
Bray, Anna Eliza, and Mary Maria Colling. “Letters to Robert Southey”. Fables and Other Pieces in Verse by M.M. Colling, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, pp. 1-85.
16
Bray...
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...
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
Textual Production
Ann Batten Cristall
That year Dyer
also recommended ABC
's poems to Joseph Cottle
of Bristol, and two years later, by May 1799, he proposed to supply Robert Southey
with something by ABC
, and something by Amelia Opie
Education
George Eliot
Her devotion to John Bunyan
's Pilgrim's Progress remained unchanged during this period. She also read heavyweight works of theology, Hannah More
's letters, and a life of William Wilberforce
. By late 1838, however...
Textual Production
Celia Fiennes
CF
's travel writing was first publicly mentioned when Robert Southey
quoted it in his Omniana; or, Horæ Otiosiores (About Everything; or, Leisure Hours) as the work of a lady.
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.
Fiennes, Celia. “Editorial Note and Introduction”. The Illustrated Journeys of Celia Fiennes, edited by Christopher Morris, Macdonald; Webb and Bower, pp. 8-31.
10
Publishing
Margaret Fuller
This was followed by a review, in the August issue, of the novels of Edward Bulwer (later Bulwer-Lytton)
(which she put forward as worth examining because of their moral qualities). Further essays by MF
appeared...
Literary responses
Ann Taylor Gilbert
Those who left a record of their enthusiasm for these little books included Robert Southey
, Dr Thomas Arnold
of Rugby School, and Archbishop Whately
. James Montgomery
and Maria Edgeworth
were particularly appreciative of Ann.
Armitage, Doris Mary. The Taylors of Ongar. W. Heffer and Sons.
172
Friends, Associates
Anne Grant
At about this time her friends included Robert Southey
, Joanna Baillie
, and Eliza Fletcher
. With the last-named her warm and close personal friendship triumphed over their opposing politics (Grant being a Tory...
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...
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...
Friends, Associates
Mary Hays
After Wollstonecraft's death, and Fenwick's departure from England, it seems unlikely that MH
found female friends to replace them, though she knew well such people as Elizabeth Inchbald
, Anna Letitia Barbauld
, and Charles
