Robert Southey
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A Brief Account of the Life and Works of Robert Southey
William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge—these are the names of men who will forever be remembered as the greatest Romantic poets and some of the greatest poets in the history of literature. Similarly, Robert Southey will always be a remembered Romantic, but not as a great poet; rather Southey is known as an associate of the great poets, namely Wordsworth and Coleridge. Rather than in his humble successes, the great interest in Robert Southey lies in his magnificent failures. Born on August 12, 1774 in Bristol, England, Southey spent much of his childhood in the home of his eccentric aunt, where he developed a love of books and reading that defined the remainder of his life. In 1788, at the age of fourteen, he entered Westminster School, from which he was expelled after only four years for factitious writing. In that same year, 1792, Southey’s father died, and a year later, he entered Balliol College, Oxford. Southey was the inspiration for the designation of the “Lake Poets,” a name coined by Fancis Jeffrey in criticism of Southey’s epic poem, "Thalaba the Destroyer," claiming that the work lacked originality. Along with Southey, Jeffrey grouped Wordsworth and Coleridge under the title, calling them a “fraternity” who lived in the Lake District and undermined the natural feelings that poetry was meant to evoke. Though Southey’s poetry is not nearly of the same caliber as that of Wordsworth and Coleridge, he has always been associated with and remembered alongside them, making him one of the best known poets of those whose poetry goes largely unread. Interestingly, Southey had little in common with Coleridge and Wordsworth stylistically and ideologically, as the “school’s” greatest connection was merely geographic. Despite living there for more than half of his life, Southey like the other Lake Poets wrote the majority of his best poetry before he moved to the Lake District. While he was at Oxford, he became friends with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom he collaborated in playwriting. In 1794, Southey left Oxford before attaining a degree, and upon moving to Bristol, he clandestinely married the sister of Coleridge’s wife, Edith Fricker. Between the years of 1789 and 1790, while living in a suburb of Bristol, Southey wrote over fifty poems, but all the while, his friend and brother-in-law, Coleridge, tried to persuade him to move north to Keswick to be near him. Finally, in 1803, after the death of their baby daughter, Margaret, Robert and Edith Southey moved to Greta Hall so that Edith could be near her sister Sara during her time of grief. Greta Hall provided Southey with an inexpensive place to live with room enough to house his enormous library and still have space to write. Robert and Edith had eight children in all, but only four lived past childhood. Southey made his money as an author and a journalist for the Quarterly Review, which he used to support not only his own family, but also that of his sister-in-law, Sara Coleridge, after Samuel stopped supporting her. In 1813 he was named Poet Laureate of England after Sir Walter Scott declined the title. In 1837, Southey’s wife, Edith, died, and two years later he married a woman poet, Caroline Bowles. Despite being offered many lucrative positions elsewhere, Southey had no desire to leave Keswick. After years of increased mental decline, he died in March of 1843 and was buried at Crosthwaite Church in Keswick. William Wordsworth, who succeeded Southey in Laureateship and had become a close friend of his, was in attendance at the funeral and wrote the inscription for the monument in his honor. The life and writing of Robert Southey have been much neglected in recent years and many of his works are difficult to find in print. Southey has received much criticism for his poetry from various sources. It has been described not only as unoriginal, but also as lacking strong emotion and imaginative subtlety. Despite the faults in his poetic works, however, Southey is highly praised for his writing in prose, hailed as having written some of the most beautiful and natural prose of all time. Even his most avid literary adversaries, including Lord Byron, commend Southey for his perfect work in prose. However, despite his talent for such writing and his attempts at poetry, Southey is still remembered most as an associate of Coleridge and Wordsworth, rather than as a poet himself. Southey’s most notable works are his three major Romantic epics: Joan of Arc, Thalaba the Destroyer, and Madoc. In addition, he wrote numerous poems in the Romantic style, the inspiration for which he derived from the rustic and humble. Robert and his wife would often dine with William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and though he did not think much of Godwin, Southey was enchanted by Wollstonecraft’s charm. Southey was politically aligned with early feminism, and having met Mary Wollstonecraft in 1797 among the radicals he encountered in London, he wrote the sonnet To Mary Wollstonecraft which was published in his 1797 work Poems. Many of his works were characterized as feminist for their advocacy of women’s liberty. Robert Southey’s life among the great writers and poets of the Romantic period is worthy of recognition, despite his failures as a poet. Southey’s life was characterized by a love of reading and books, and he died with 14,000 volumes in his personal library. Wordsworth captured Southey’s character beautifully in the inscription he wrote for his monument: “Ye vales and hills whose beauty hither drew / The poet's steps, and fixed him here, on you / His eyes have closed! And ye, loved books, no more / Shall Southey feed upon your precious lore.” - by Molly McEvily Works Cited |
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