Robert Southey

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Robert Southey (August 12, 1774 – March 21, 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate. Although his fame tends to be eclipsed by that of his contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey's verse enjoys enduring popularity. Moreover, he was a literary scholar, writing a number of biographical studies of historical interest, notably on the life and works of John Bunyan and John Wesley.

1 Life
2 Major works
3 Wikipedia Links
4 Trivia
5 External links
6 Notes

[edit] Life

He was born in Bristol to Thomas Southey and Margaret Hill and educated at Westminster School (from which he was expelled for writing a magazine article condemning flogging) and Balliol College, Oxford (of his time at Oxford Southey was later to say "All I learnt was a little swimming ... and a little boating."). After experimenting with a writing partnership with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he published his first collection of poems in 1794. The same year, he, Coleridge and a few others discussed setting up an idealistic community in America.

Their wants would be simple and natural; their toil need not be such as the slaves of luxury endure; where possessions were held in common, each would work for all; in their cottages the best books would have a place; literature and science, bathed anew in the invigorating stream of life and nature, could not but rise reanimated and purified. Each young man should take to himself a mild and lovely woman for his wife; it would be her part to prepare their innocent food, and tend their hardy and beautiful race.

Later iterations of the plan moved the commune to Wales, but later, Southey was the first of the group to reject the idea as unworkable.

Southey's wife, Edith, was the sister of Coleridge's wife. The Southeys set up home at Greta Hall, Keswick, in the Lake District, living on a tiny income. From 1809, he contributed to the Quarterly Review, and had become so well-known by 1813 that he was appointed Poet Laureate.

In 1819, through a mutual friend (John Rickman), Southey met leading civil engineer Thomas Telford and struck up a strong friendship. From mid-August to 1 October 1819, Southey accompanied Telford on an extensive tour of his engineering projects in the Scottish Highlands, keeping a diary of his observations. This was published posthumously in 1929 as Journal of a tour in Scotland in 1819.

In 1838, Edith died and Southey married Caroline Anne Bowles, also a poet. Many of his poems are still read by British schoolchildren, the best-known being The Inchcape Rock and After Blenheim (possibly one of the earliest anti-war poems).

[edit] Major works

Image:Robert Southey - Project Gutenberg eText 13103.jpg

Robert Southey

Fall of Robespierre ( 1794 ).
Joan of Arc: An Epic Poem ( 1796 )
Poems ( 1797 - 99 )
Letters from Spain ( 1797 )
Devil's Thoughts ( 1799 )
Thalaba the Destroyer ( 1801 )
Amadis de Gaula ( 1803 ). Translation
Madoc ( 1805 )
Letters from England ( 1807 ) ISBN 0-86299-130-7, (Alan Sutton, Paperback).
Palmerin of England ( 1807 ). Translation.
The Cid ( 1808 ). Translation
The Curse of Kehama ( 1810 )
The Life of Nelson ( 1813 )
Roderick, the Last of the Goths ( 1814 )
Wat Tyler: A Dramatic Poem ( 1817 )
Journal of a Tour in Scotland in 1819 ( 1929, posthumous )
The Life of Wesley, and the rise and progress of Methodism (c.1820)
A Vision of Judgment ( 1821 )
Life of Cromwell ( 1821 )
Thomas More ( 1829 )
The Pilgrim's Progress with a Life of John Bunyan (1830)
Cowper ( 1833 )
The Doctors ( 1834 ). Includes the first published version of the fairy tale-like The Three Bears.
Select Lives of Cromwell and Bunyan (1846)
The Inchcape Rock
After Blenheim

[edit] Wikipedia Links

[edit] Trivia

In 1799, both Southey and Coleridge were involved with early experiments with nitrous oxide (laughing gas). Experiments were performed by Cornishman Humphry Davy. [1]

In 1808, Southey used the pseudonym Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella to write Letters From England, an account of a tour of the country supposedly from a foreigner's perspective. The book is said to contain a more accurate picture of English ways at the beginning of the nineteenth century than exists anywhere else. [2]

Byron wrote a scornful dedication to his celebrated narritive poem Don Juan addressed to Southey, who is dismissed as insolent, narrow and shabby. This was based both on Byron's disrespect for Southey's literary talent, and his disdain for Southey's conservative politics. There is a satirical portrait of Southey in Byron's poem 'The Vision of Judgment', which is a parody of Southey's 'A Vision of Judgment'.

Lewis Carroll's "You Are Old, Father William" in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a parody of Southey's "The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them."

[edit] External links

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Robert Southey

[edit] Notes

Preceded by: Henry James Pye	British Poet Laureate 1813–1843	Succeeded by: William Wordsworth

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