Robert Southey (Biography)
(Born Aug. 12, 1774, Bristol, England — died March 21, 1843, Keswick, England) was an English poet and writer of miscellaneous prose who is chiefly remembered for his association with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, both leaders of the early English Romantic movement.
The son of a linen draper, Southey spent much of his childhood at Bath in the care of his aunt. Educated at Westminster School and Balliol College, Oxford, Southey expressed his ardent sympathy for the French Revolution in the long poem Joan of Arc (published 1796). After leaving Oxford without a degree, in 1795 he secretly married Edith Fricker. That same year he went to Portugal with his uncle, who was the British chaplain in Lisbon. While in Portugal he wrote the letters published as Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal (1797), studied the literature of those two countries, and learned to “thank God he was an Englishman.” So began the change from revolutionary to Tory (conservative).
In these years he composed many of his best short poems and ballads, became a regular contributor to newspapers and reviews and also did some translations. In 1803 the Southeys moved to Keswick and had seven children. He would live in Keswick for the rest of his life. About this time, he became involved in a literary dispute with Lord Byron, denouncing Byron as belonging to a “Satanic school” of poetry. His last years were clouded by his wife’s insanity, by family quarrels resulting from his second marriage after her death (1837), and by his own failing mental and physical health.