Southey, Robert

Southey, Robert (sou`thē, sŭth`ē), 1774–1843, English author. Primarily a poet, he was numbered among the so-called Lake poets. While at Oxford he formed (1794) a friendship with Coleridge and joined with him in a plan for an American utopia along the Susquehanna River that was never actualized. Southey married in 1795, made several trips to Portugal, and in 1803 settled with his wife and the Coleridges near Keswick in the Lake District. A prolific writer, he enjoyed great popularity and renown in his day and was made poet laureate in 1813. Today, however, his reputation as a poet rests upon his friendships with Coleridge and Wordsworth and a handful of short poems, notably "The Battle of Blenheim," "The Holly Tree," and the epic Vision of Judgment (1821). As a prose writer, however, his reputation has increased. Included among his prose works are biographies of Nelson (1813) and Wesley (1820), several histories, ecclesiastical writings, and translations from the French and Spanish.

Bibliography

See his letters (ed. by J. Simmons, 1951); study by G. Carnall (1960); L. Madden, ed., Robert Southey: The Critical Heritage (1972).

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Southey, Robert

(born Aug. 12, 1774, Bristol, Gloucestershire, Eng.—died March 21, 1843, Keswick, Cumberland) English poet and prose writer. In youth Southey ardently embraced the ideals of the French Revolution, as did Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom he was associated from 1794. Like Coleridge, he gradually became more conservative. About 1799 he devoted himself to writing; later he was obliged to produce unremittingly to support both his and Coleridge's family. In 1813 he was appointed poet laureate. His poetry is now little read, but his prose style is masterly in its ease and clarity, as seen in such works as Life of Nelson (1813), Life of Wesley (1820), and The Doctor (1834–47), a fantastic, rambling miscellany.

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Southey, Robert 

Born Aug. 12, 1774, in Bristol; died Mar. 21, 1843, at Great Hall, near the city of Keswick. English poet. A representative of the Lake School of Poets.

From 1792 to 1794, Southey studied at Oxford University, where he and S. T. Coleridge became friends. In 1795 his first anthology of verse, Poems, was published. Although he was originally a radical, as shown in the drama Wat Tyler (1794; published 1817), by the end of the 1790’s Southey had become a reactionary; his works are increasingly marked by mysticism and theological didacticism, an evolution that is reflected in the narrative poems Thalaba the Destroyer (1801), Madoc (1805), The Curse of Kehama (1810), and Roderick, the Last of the Goths (1814). The narrative poem The Vision of Judgement (1821) inspired a satirical parody of the same title by Lord Byron.

Southey’s works had an influence on W. Scott and P. B. Shelley. In Russia his works were translated by A. S. Pushkin, V. A. Zhukovskii, A. N. Pleshcheev, N. S. Gumilev, and E. G. Bagritskii.

WORKS

Poems. Oxford, 1909.
Life and Correspondence, vols. 1–6. London, 1849–50.
In Russian translation:
Ballady. Petrograd, 1922. (Preface by N. Gumilev.)

REFERENCES

Elistratova, A. A. Nasledie angliiskogo romantizma i sovremennost’. Moscow, 1960.
Simmons, J. Southey. London, 1945.
Carnall, G. Robert Southey and His Age. Oxford, 1960.

A. N. GORBUNOV