Robert Southey Biography Quotes 16 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Robert Southey was born in 1774 in Bristol, England, the son of a linen draper, Thomas Southey, and Margaret Hill. His maternal uncle, the clergyman Herbert Hill, became a critical influence, offering guidance, hospitality, and later the opportunity for extended stays in Portugal that would shape Southey's historical and literary interests. Southey attended Westminster School, where his precocious intellect and fierce independence emerged early. A polemic he wrote against corporal punishment, printed in a school periodical called The Flagellant, led to his dismissal from the school. He entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1792 but left without taking a degree, restless with academic routine and already intent on a literary life.

Radical Beginnings and Literary Debut
The ferment of the 1790s drew Southey toward visionary schemes and republican sympathies. In 1794 he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the two conceived a plan of Pantisocracy, a utopian community on the banks of the Susquehanna River in America. Though the project never materialized, it forged a lasting bond and linked Southey to a circle that soon included William Wordsworth. Southey's early epic, Joan of Arc (1796), reflects his youthful radicalism and belief in heroic individual virtue. In Bristol, the bookseller Joseph Cottle supported the fledgling careers of Southey and Coleridge, publishing their early verse and offering the material footing to continue. Around this time Southey married Edith Fricker, sister to Sara Fricker who married Coleridge, thus intertwining the families personally as well as intellectually.

Portugal, Spain, and the Historian's Turn
Through Herbert Hill, then chaplain to the British community in Lisbon, Southey first visited Portugal in 1795 and returned for longer stays. He absorbed Iberian history, Catholic ritual and culture, and the archives of empire. These experiences informed Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal (1797), the pseudo-travel Letters from England by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella (1807), the translation Chronicle of the Cid (1808), and the ambitious History of Brazil (issued in parts from 1810). The Iberian focus stayed with him, culminating also in the long poem Roderick, the Last of the Goths (1814), an epic rooted in early Spanish legend.

Greta Hall and the Lake Poets
From 1803 Southey made his home at Greta Hall in Keswick, where he became the household mainstay. Coleridge was often absent, and Southey's steady income as a man of letters helped sustain both his own family and, at times, the Coleridges. Close friendship with Wordsworth deepened during these years; with Coleridge they became known as the Lake Poets. Southey's long narrative poems Thalaba the Destroyer (1801), Madoc (1805), The Curse of Kehama (1810), and Roderick achieved wide circulation, even as critical fashions later shifted toward the shorter lyrics of his peers.

Poet Laureate and Public Man of Letters
In 1813, after the death of Henry James Pye and following Walter Scott's refusal, Southey accepted the office of Poet Laureate. The laureateship, which he held until his death, brought visibility and responsibility: occasional odes, court poems, and a public role in literary debates. He contributed extensively to the Quarterly Review under editor William Gifford, becoming a central Tory voice on politics, church, and society. Over time, Southey moved from youthful radicalism to a defense of established institutions, championing national education and philanthropy but opposing revolutionary agitation. His Book of the Church (1824) and the two-volume Life of Wesley (1820) reflect his engagement with religious history and the English ecclesiastical settlement.

Prose Mastery and Historical Writing
While known in his day for epics, Southey's enduring reputation rests as much on prose. The Life of Nelson (1813) remains a remarkably swift, humane biography, widely read for its narrative clarity and moral poise. He authored the History of the Peninsular War and continued his Iberian scholarship, while also producing the reflective Sir Thomas More; or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society (1829), a dialogue pondering modernity and reform. Late in life he issued volumes of miscellany such as The Doctor, which showcased his omnivorous reading and essayistic playfulness.

Controversy and Literary Combat
Southey's conspicuous conservatism made him a lightning rod. He denounced what he called the "Satanic school" of poetry, a phrase widely understood as aimed at Lord Byron. Byron replied with satire and, later, with The Vision of Judgment, a famous lampoon of Southey's own A Vision of Judgement. The polemics fixed Southey in the public mind as a moralizing traditionalist, a contrast sharpened by his friendships with more reserved figures like Wordsworth and the collegial respect he exchanged with Scott, whose historical breadth he admired.

Family, Friendships, and Character
Life at Greta Hall was industrious and disciplined. Southey rose early, maintained rigorous work schedules, and took restorative walks among the fells. He was a loyal friend to Charles Lamb and maintained extensive correspondence across Britain and abroad. Personal trials struck hard: the death of a beloved son, the long illness and death of his wife Edith in 1837, and the burdens of supporting a sprawling household. In 1839 he married the poet Caroline Bowles, a long-time correspondent whose sensibility he cherished, though by then his health was in decline.

Honors, Later Years, and Decline
Public recognition arrived steadily. Universities conferred honorary distinctions, and his standing as laureate made him a national figure. Sir Robert Peel, who admired him, offered a baronetcy; Southey declined, wary of the financial obligations attached to a title. From the late 1830s his mental powers ebbed, likely the result of degenerative illness. He died in 1843 at Keswick, with the Lake District he had made his home as a constant backdrop to a lifetime of reading, writing, and public service.

Legacy
Southey's legacy is complex: a poet of large-scale epics that satisfied an age hungry for historical imagination; a biographer whose Life of Nelson set a standard for lucid narrative; a historian of Iberia who opened English eyes to Portuguese and Spanish pasts; a polemicist who, for better or worse, stood as a conscience for establishment values during a time of upheaval. His relationships with Coleridge and Wordsworth helped define an era, even as his own path diverged from theirs. The breadth of his labors, undertaken to sustain family and friends at Greta Hall, reveals a working writer of uncommon range and stamina, a central figure in the culture of Romantic Britain.

Our collection contains 16 quotes who is written by Robert, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Motivational - Ethics & Morality - Wisdom - Truth.

Other people realated to Robert: Charles Lamb (Critic), Henry Taylor (Dramatist), Humphry Davy (Scientist), Thomas de Quincey (Author), Bernard Barton (Poet), Sara Coleridge (Author)