Lynda Pratt

Editing Robert Southey for the twenty‐first century

Robert Southey is currently a fractured writer – a Romantic fragment. The editorial neglect he suffered from the mid‐nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century means that his writings are in a state of disrepair – so much so that a complete canon of his writings is only now being established. In addition, his elision from canonical accounts of late eighteenth‐ and early nineteenth‐century writing has meant that his reputation was (until recently at least) in ruins. This essay will focus on two major new editorial projects – the first ever collected editions of Southey’s poetry and letters. It will also explore their impact both on Southey’s reputation and our understanding of Romantic‐period culture.

Robert Southey and the Peninsular Campaign

This essay examines two aspects of Southey’s Romantic Iberianism that have often been overlooked—his writings on the peninsular conflict in the Edinburgh Annual Register and his unfinished series of inscriptions on the war. Both shed important light on Southey’s developing political ideas and on his sense of his public role. Moreover, they connect Southey the writer of prose (particularly contemporary history) with Southey the controversial Poet Laureate.

Southey’s West Country

On 29 August 1803, Robert and Edith Southey completed their packing and left their home city of Bristol. Their departure was prompted by personal tragedy: the death of their only child from hydrocephalus. As Southey explained to his younger brother: all is over & poor Margaret in heaven … the blow has gone to my very heart, & made me often think those the happiest who have none but themselves to care for. Joe [Southey’s dog] is left with Biss … John Morgan & his wife have been uncommonly kind in their attention to us. they have got a home for the cat. Hort houses my lumber at the Red Lodge whither he is removed. it is a dreary business packing up. the worst I ever had yet … this place & every thing about it is haunted. I cannot escape the recollection & the very image of her.1