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Robert Southey Edit Profile

poet

Robert Southey was an English poet. He was also a biographer and his works included biographies of John Bunyan, John Wesley, William Cowper, Oliver Cromwell and Horatio Nelson. Southey was an author of Letters From England that contained an accurate picture of English ways at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The poet died on 23 March 1843.

Education

Southey was sent down for writing a magazine article condemning flogging.

Career

Robert Southey published his first collection of poems in 1794.

In 1799 Southey and Coleridge were involved with early experiments with nitrous oxide (laughing gas).

In 1808 Southey wrote Letters From England, an account of a tour of the country supposedly from a foreigner's perspective. The book contained an accurate picture of English ways at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The best-known Southey's poems The Inchcape Rock, God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop, After Blenheim and Cataract of Lodore are still read by British schoolchildren.

Achievements

  • 1813-till the death - Southey was Poet Laureate .

    Southey popularised a number of words into English.

    Southey is also credited with penning the popular children's nursery rhyme What are Little Boys Made of? around 1820.

Works

  • book

    • The Curse of Kehama

    • After Blenheim

    • Madoc

Connections

Father:
Robert Southey

Mother:
Margaret Hill

1st wife:
Edith Fricker

They married on 14 November 1795.

She died in 1838.

2nd wife:
Caroline Anne Bowles

Friend:
Thomas Telford

In 1819 Southey got acquainted with Thomas Telford. That year Southey accompanied his friend on an extensive tour of his engineering projects and kept a diary of the observations. This material was published only in 1929.

Friend:
Charlotte Brontë

Friend:
Walter Savage Landor

They became acquainted in 1808. Savage Landor's early work was admired by Southey and the two had mutual admiration of each other's work.