The Collected Letters of Robert Southey
This open, scholarly, digital edition makes available for the first time the 546 surviving letters written by the controversial ‘Lake Poet’ Robert Southey between 1818-1821.
This edition of Southey’s letters 1818-1821 is part of a larger, fully open, digital project, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: 1791-1839 (12 Parts, 2010- ).
The project offers a major reappraisal of the ‘missing link’ of British Romanticism. Southey’s letters reveal him to have been a multi-disciplinary, multi-lingual, one-man literary industry, an ardent polemicist and advocate of writers’ right to intervene in public life. He sparked cultural, social, political and religious controversies, and spoke forcefully to, with and about an unparalleled number of national and international communities. His correspondence also sheds important new light on the Romantic period.
Publication details and content overview
Published: March 2017
Romantic Circles, University of Boulder, Colorado
Southey’s letters 1818-1821 cover a huge range of subjects. These include: culture, politics, religion, society; textual production and exchange; family life; literary friendships and feuds; health and well-being; climate change and the Lake District landscape; the ‘German Horse’ (predecessor of the bicycle); lottery tickets; philanthropy; unusual food; and cats.
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Photo credits
Sketch of Robert Southey by 'R.A.B.', reproduced with kind permission of Special Collections, University of Victoria Libraries, British Columbia, Canada.
Letter from Southey to Anna Seward, 4 July 1808, Newstead Abbey Roe - Byron Collection RB K116. Reproduced with kind permission of Nottingham City Museums and Galleries: Newstead Abbey.