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.
A Christian and political radical, STC
associated with William Godwin
and Robert Southey
. William Wordsworth
wrote of him on 21 March 1796, I saw but little of him. I wished indeed to have seen...
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
Friends, Associates
Hannah More
Many of her later friends were at least a generation younger than she was. She met many members of the Clapham Sect
in the 1790s, of whom Henry Thornton
and his daughter Marianne
became particularly...
Friends, Associates
Anna Eliza Bray
Two days later, AEB
briefly met Robert Southey
for the first time in person in London. They had been corresponding for some years after he received a review copy of her novel The Protestant.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
116: 52
Bray, Anna Eliza. Autobiography of Anna Eliza Bray. Editor Kempe, John A., Chapman and Hall.
292-3
Friends, Associates
Anna Eliza Bray
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
Charlotte Smith
She also at this period met and impressed Robert Southey
.
Fletcher, Loraine. Charlotte Smith: A Critical Biography. Macmillan.
289
Family and Intimate relationships
Caroline Bowles
CB
had her first meeting, in London, with Robert Southey
, the Poet Laureate.
CB
married poet Robert Southey
at Boldre Church near Lymington in the New Forest.
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.
Hall, Samuel Carter. A Book of Memories of Great Men and Women of the Age, from Personal Acquaintance. Virtue.
198
Family and Intimate relationships
Mary Robinson
MR
's daughter grew up to be a writer, and to publish two books under her own name as well as revising and editing work by MR
. Hers are the gothic, epistolary Minerva
novel...
Family and Intimate relationships
Sara Coleridge
SC
's mother, born Sarah Fricker
, had several sisters, two of whom also married prominent poets. One married Robert Lovell
, and another, Edith Fricker
, married Robert Southey
, who became a major...
Family and Intimate relationships
Sara Coleridge
Robert Southey
, SC
's uncle by marriage, contributed significantly to her upbringing and education.
Commire, Anne, and Deborah Klezmer, editors. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Yorkin Publications.
Family and Intimate relationships
Caroline Bowles
After the death of his first wife, Edith Fricker
, in 1838, Robert Southey
proposed to CB
. The original Dictionary of National Biography called her acceptance of his offer the most momentous step of her life.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Family and Intimate relationships
Caroline Bowles
CB
was too old to have children with Robert Southey
, and the children of his first marriage were not disposed to welcome her warmly. Virginia Blain
speculates that their marriage was not consummated. Southey's...