Read Southey's Life of Wesley and ingenious but by no means faithful production
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: I.G. Print: Book
'Southey, W[ordsworth] told [William] Mathews in Oct. 1795, "is about publishing an epic poem on the subject of the Maid of orleans. From the specimens I have seen I am inclined to think it will have many beauties."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth Manuscript: Unknown
Dorothy Wordsworth to William and Mary Wordsworth, 3 May [1812]: 'I am reading the Cid.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
Dorothy Wordsworth to Catherine Clarkson, 4 October [1813]: 'My whole summer's reading has been a part of two volumes of Mrs Grant's American Lady, which Southey lent to be speedily returned, and a dip or two in Southey's Nelson - with snatches at the Newspaper and Sunday's readings with the Bairns.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
William Wordsworth to John Scott, 25 February 1816, on own and contemporaries' endeavours to celebrate victory at Waterloo in verse: 'Southey is a Fellow labourer. I have seen but little of his performance, but that little gave me great pleasure.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth
' ... James Losh reported in his diary for 4 Sept 1800 that Madoc "is ready for publication ... Southey showed me about two years ago two books of this poem which I admired but thought deficient in dignity of sentiment and style."'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Losh Manuscript: Unknown
'In early Oct. 1810 C[oleridge] wrote to W[ordsworth]: "I send the Brazil which has entertained & instructed me."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
Byron to the editor of The Courier, 5 February 1822: 'Sir / -- I have read in your Journal some remarks of Mr. Southey ... which he is pleased to entitle a reply to "a note relating to himself." appending to [Byron's ] the "two Foscari".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Newspaper
Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 14 October 1800: 'Wm. lay down after dinner -- I read Southey's Spain.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth Print: Book
"Robert Blatchford, growing up in Halifax in the 1860s, read from the penny library there Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Southey's Life of Nelson, Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, and novels by Captain Marryat, the Brontes, and Miss M. E. Braddon."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Blatchford Print: Book
"But I read with unchecked voracity, and in several curious directions...My Father presented me with the entire bulk of Southey's stony verse, which I found impossible to penetrate, but my stepmother lent me 'The Golden Treasury' in which almost everything seemed exquisite."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Gosse Print: Book
Charlotte Bronte to Robert Southey, 16 March 1837: 'At the first perusal of your letter I felt only shame, and regret that I had ever ventured to trouble you [with request for advice on starting literary career] ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Letter
Charlotte Bronte to Charles Cuthbert Southey, 26 August 1850, regarding possible publication of letters between herself and Robert Southey: 'I have now read them and feel that -- truly wise and kind as they are -- they ought to be published ...'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Manuscript: Letter
Charlotte Bronte to Charles Cuthbert Southey, 26 August 1850: ' ... the perusal of his [Robert Southey's] "Life and Correspondence" arranged by yourself has much deepened the esteem and admiration with whch I previously regarded him.'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte Bronte to William Smith Williams, 12 April 1850: 'The perusal of Southey's "Life" has lately afforded me much pleasure; the autobiography with which it commences is deeply interesting and the letters which follow are scarcely less so ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Charlotte Bronte Print: Book
'George Howell, bricklayer and trade unionist..."read promiscuously. How could it be otherwise? I had no real guide, was obliged to feel my way into light. Yet perhaps there was a guidance, although indefinite and without distinctive aim". Howell groped his way through literature "on the principle that one poet's works suggested another, or the criticisms on one led to comparisons with another. Thus: Milton - Shakespeare; Pope-Dryden; Byron-Shelley; Burns-Scott; Coleridge-Wordsworth and Southey, and later on Spenser-Chaucer, Bryant-Longfellow, and so on". By following these intertextual links, autodidacts could reconstruct the literary canon on their own'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book
" ... a large part of the manuscript for William Godwin's play Abbas, with Coleridge's commentary dating from 1801, has recently come to light ... there he ... adopted a set of symbols for common problems, 'false or intolerable English' ... 'common-place book Language,' and 'bad metre.' He did the same for a copy of Joan of Arc that he annotated in 1814."
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
?Malden and I have read Thalaba together, and are proceeding to the Curse of Kehama.?
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
[Shelley encouraged her to read] 'some key Romantic texts (Coleridge, Scott, Southey, Volney's "Les ruines"), radical politics ("The Rights of Man" and "The Age of Reason") and radical sexual politics (Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" and James Lawrence's anti-marriage utopia, "The Empire of the Nairs").'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Westbrook
'[Returns after afternoon reading session] to renew the subject from a more enlarged account of this wonder of the 18th Century [Chatterton] lately published by Southey ... in 3 large volumes.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Upcott Print: Book
'From that time [summer 1840] to the present [1845] I have not read much. I have, however, looked through Lord Byron's works, the "Memoirs of Mr William Hutton", and Dr Stilling's Autobiography; with some of the works of Sir Walter Scott, Dr Southey, and Miss Martineau.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'Farewell--not as you say so to your favourites or they to you--not as any Woman ever spoke that Word for they never mean it to be what I will make it--but as nuns & those who die--as Madoc said it to Llewellyn--so will I to you'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
'Read the Excursion & Madoc.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Unknown
'M Read Madoc all morning.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Unknown
'He [Percy Bysshe Shelley] reads the curse of Kehama to us in the evening'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Unknown
'She [Mary] reads the curse of Kehama while Shelley walks out with Peacock who dines.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Unknown
'In the evening Shelley reads Thaliba aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Unknown
'I wanted to write about Malcolm's Life and Sothey's new letters, and other things; but I must stop now'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
'Annabella was now reading Cowper's "Iliad" and annotating evey second line; she was studying Alfieri with the family-solicitor's daughter; for relaxation condescending to "Evelina". In "Evelina" she was disappointed, like a good many more of its readers - more perhaps than make the confession. There was study of Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge as well, for everyone was reading them... Annabella waded through "Madoc". She found some passages wearisome but was convinced that Southey would one day be ranked high "among the ancient poets".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke Print: Book
[Letter from Byron to Anabella Milbanke, 28 Nov 1814]. 'I think Southey's "Roderick" as near perfection as poetry can be - which considering how I dislike that school I wonder at. However, so it is. If he had never written anything else, he might safely stake his fame on the last of the Goths'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon, Lord Byron Print: Book
'Mary receives her first lesson in greek - She reads the curse of Kehama while Shelley walks out with Peacock'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'After reading Southey's Life and Correspondence, the maintenance of that friendship [between the conservative Southey and the more radical William Taylor] appears to me [Harriet Martineau] more singular than when we young people used to catch a glimpse in the street [at Norwich] of the author of "Thalaba" and "Kehama."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Book
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 11 December 1837: '"Evening".-- Read aloud Southey's famous article in the Quarterly on British Monachism [sic]. Entertaining, but with a vain attempt to prop up Lady Isabella King's institution.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Serial / periodical
Harriet Martineau, Journal, 14 January 1838: 'Read Channing's "Texas," and found it nobler than ever before [...] Read aloud Southey's article in the Quarterly on Cemeteries; much learning, but little interest.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau Print: Serial / periodical
[Item transcribed into a commonplace book]: [Untitled]; [Text]'They sin who tell us love can die/ With life all other passions fly/ All others are but vanity/ Earthly these passions, as of earth/ They perish where they have their birth/ ?' [total = 20 lines]
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Magdalene Sharpe- Erskine Print: Unknown
'I consign you therefore if desirous of additional information, to two well-written articles by Jeffrey in the last "Edinr reviews" - and if you honour the maxim, audi alteram partem [hear the other side], to sundry delicious speculations from the pen of Mr Southey, wherein these points are handled at considerable length in the "Quarterly review".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
'I consign you therefore if desirous of additional information, to two well-written articles by Jeffrey in the last "Edinr reviews" - and if you honour the maxim, audi alteram partem [hear the other side], to sundry delicious speculations from the pen of Mr Southey, wherein these points are handled at considerable length in the "Quarterly review".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
'They sin who tell us Love candie/...' [16 lines] 'Southey'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Julia Print: Unknown
'I have not yet finished "Joan of Arc". Near 500 lines at the beginning of the 2d book were supplied by S.T. Coleridge. These appear to me to be the worst I have ever read. Who would suppose that the following sentence is in blank verse. Fancy - Peopling air by absence [to] teach my self-control & c. In contrast to the above I will transcribe one of the most beautiful passages speaking of the death of a common soldier of unrecorded name.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'[...] Gaze on - then heart-sick [...] It is in the first edition of this poem, that I am reading, which Southey composed in 6 weeks & corrected it, while it was proceeding thro' the press. A second edition has since been published, which the reviews state to be much more perfect than the first.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'took "Joan of Arc" to the library. I think the 4 first books, are much superior to any which follow, if we except the 9th [in margin: & the vision of the Maid] but even that [Book 9] contains something rather disgusting towards the beginning. His descriptions of battles are sometimes confused.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Hunter Print: Book
'read in Southeys "Wesley"'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Clare Print: Book
'Friday, 2nd April,
Walking over the Walton Hall Housing Estate. The spread of the city goes on apace. I find myself hoping that someday the grass will grow again over the site of so much ugliness. Talking of ugliness, nothing adds so much to its horror as monotony. Here are embryo slums, unless trees and gardens save them.
Read ? ?The life of Nelson? (Southey)'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'Have you seen the last Edinr review? There are several promising articles in it - Scotts "Lord of the Isles," Standard Novels, Lewis' & Clarke's travels up the Missouri, (of which a most delectable account is given in the Quarterly), Joanna Southcott, &c &c. I have been revising Akenside, since I saw you. - He pos[s]esses a warm imagination & great strength & beauty of diction. His poem, you know, does not like Campbell's "Hope" consist of a number of little incidents told in an interesting manner - & selected to illustrate his positions - it is little else than a moral declamation. Nevertheless I like it. Akenside was an enthusiastic admirer of the ancient republics and of the ancient philosophers - He thought highly of Lord Shaftesbury's principles & had a bad opinion of Scotsmen. For this last peculiarity, he has been severely caricatured by Smollet[t] in his Peregrine Pickle - under the character of the fantastic English Doctor in Franc[e] - When we mention Shaftesbury - is his book in your pos[s]ession, and can you let me have a reading of it?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
'This same Doctor [Chalmers], as you will know wr[i]tes the first article in the late "Edinr review" - on the causes & cure of mendicity. After expatiating at considerable length on the evils of pauperism, he proposes as a remedy to increase the number of clergymen. They who know the general habits of Scottish ministers will easily see how sovereign a specific this is. The remainder of the review is good reading; but as you will have seen it before this time, I will not trouble you farther on the matter - I have seen the last Number of the "Quarterly review". It seems to be getting into a very rotten frothy vein. Mr Southey is a most unblushing character; & his political lucubrations are very notable. He has been sorely galled by "the Caledonian Oracle" poor man - I know nothing about Mr Duncan's controversy except thro the "Scotsman"; and they assign him the victory'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Serial / periodical
'I have read Southey and think it so fair and reasonable a book, that I have little or nothing to say about it; so that I follow your advice and abandon it to any one who may undertake it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Smith Print: Book
'read some of Kirke White's letters - slavish beyond all measure - begin History of the West Indies by Bryan Edwards'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
'look over Roderick - very unwell'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James IIThe Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley - again, only those not mentioned in journal entries are indicated separately in the database]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Metamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'work and read Junius read Amadis'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'read Junius - Somnium Scipionis & work - read Amadis of Gaul'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read & finish Junius - finish Somnium Scipionis - work read amadis'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Monday Sept. 19th. Rise late [...] Read the Curse of Kehama & Emile [...] Read the [S]orcerer &
Political Justice. Admire the Sorcerer very much'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Claire Clairmont Print: Book
'Saturday Sept. 17th. [...] Shelley reads aloud the Curse of Kehama.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Tuesday Sept. 20th. Rise late [...] Read Emile [...] Dine at Seven -- Shelley reads aloud
Thalaba till Bed time.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Friday Sept. 23rd. Finish the Monk [...] Buy a Greek Anacreon [...] Read Greek [...] Shelley
reads Thalaba aloud in the evening. Write a little Gre[ek] & learn four tenses of the Verb to
strike'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Saturday Sept. 24th. [...] Read Lewis Tales of Wonder and Delight. Shelley reads aloud
Thalaba in the Evening finishes it. Write Greek -- Read Smellie.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'Saturday Sept. 24th. [...] Read Lewis Tales of Wonder and Delight. Shelley reads aloud
Thalaba in the Evening finishes it. Write Greek -- Read Smellie.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to her uncle, Samuel Moulton-Barrett, c. December 1816:
'every one here declares against [Southey] allowing him very few beauties [...] for my part he
is one of my favorite poets [...] Bum [aunt] is the only person who agreed with me, indeed she
only read "Thalaba," but she thought it both beautiful, and descriptive'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Arabella Graham-Clarke Print: Book
Elizabeth Barrett to Mary Russell Mitford, 6 April 1842:
'The best and fullest biography [of William Cowper] in all ways appears to be poor Southey's --
the life published together with the works a few years ago [...] I read the book some years ago
-- Mr Kenyon lent it to me'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Barrett Print: Book
Francis Horner to his sister, 26 October 1815:
'I told you I was reading Don Roderick the Goth; and notwithstanding the romance of the
original story, it was with fatigue that I got through it. I am not surprised that the book has
had a run, because there [italics]is[end italics] a romantic story, and because it is seasoned
with methodistical cant to the taste of the times; but that the work should be commended by
any person of cultivated taste, as it has been, seems to me strange.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Horner Print: Book
'I have been reading "Southey's Life"; it does me a great deal of good. His life in a book and Mrs Charles Worsley's in actuality, have helped me more than any sermon. Southey's hard work and pecuniary anxieties come home to me'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell Print: Book
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination -
English - Thalaba.
Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy
Southey's Tour in Spain
Tommy Jones
Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade
Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto,
Gioas, La Clemenza di
Tito, Catone, Regolo,
Ciro, Zenobia -
Tassos's Aminta -
Seven Canto's of Ariosto,
Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel -
La bella pelegrina, La Zingana
Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c
French - None
If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen'
[The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Unknown
'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination -
English - Thalaba.
Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy
Southey's Tour in Spain
Tommy Jones
Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade
Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto,
Gioas, La Clemenza di
Tito, Catone, Regolo,
Ciro, Zenobia -
Tassos's Aminta -
Seven Canto's of Ariosto,
Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel -
La bella pelegrina, La Zingana
Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c
French - None
If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen'
[The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney Print: Book
'Southey's long epic poem, called "Roderick the Last of the Goths", is the new work. Every one is busy reading it, or sleeping over it'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'Kehama has not got justice take a bards word who never flatters he will live for ever'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Unknown
'Wilson who is one of the most noble fellows in existence swore terribly about the [italics] fishing [end italics] and challenges you fairly to a trial but after a serious perusal of "Wordsworth's excursion" together and no little laughter and some parodying he has with your assistance fairly confessed to me yesterday that he now holds the [italics]school [end italics] in utter contempt Wordsworth is really a fine intelligent man and one that must ever be respected but I fear the [italics] Kraken [end italics] has peppered him for this world - with its proportion of beauties (by the by they are but thin sown) it is the most heavy and the most absurd work that I ever perused without all exception - Southey's new work will be published in Novr. I have had the peculiar privilege of perusing it from end to end. It is much the best thing that was ever produced by the [italics] pond school [end italics] I assure you my lord it is and will raise Southey much in character as a poet The story moves a little heavily for some time but it is wild tragical and the circumstances in which the parties are placed extremely interesting'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Manuscript: Unknown
'Roderick is safe depend upon it I venture my judgement on it very publickly that it is the first epic poem of the age - its great merit consists in the extent and boldness of the plan its perfect consistency and the ease with which it is managed - in these respects you are so far above your cotemporaries [sic] as not to admit of a comparison - I should like above all things to review it in some respectable work'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Manuscript: Unknown
'Wordsworth and Southey have each published a new poem price of each /2:2. Southey's is a noble work the other is a very absurd one but has many most beautiful and affecting passages - Scott is in the press - the beginning is beautiful'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Manuscript: Unknown
'I have read Roderick over and over again and am the more and more convinced that it is the noblest Epic poem of the age I have had some correspondence and a good deal of conversation with Mr Jeffery [sic] about it who though he does not agree with me in every particular. He says it is too long and wants [italics] elasticity [end italics] and will not he fears be generally read though much may be said in its favours' [Hogg was trying to get Jeffrey to allow him to review the poem]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book, Hogg had also read the poem in MS
'I have read Roderick over and over again and am the more and more convinced that it is the noblest Epic poem of the age I have had some correspondence and a good deal of conversation with Mr Jeffery [sic] about it who though he does not agree with me in every particular. He says it is too long and wants [italics] elasticity [end italics] and will not he fears be generally read though much may be said in its favours' [Hogg was trying to get Jeffrey to allow him to review the poem]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Jeffrey Print: Book
'I send you two pieces which were sent me for the proposed Poetic Mirror long ago and which are not in print to my knowledge. Southey's is one of his very best'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Manuscript: Unknown
'All this has done me good like the word in 'The Doctor &c', which relieved the author so much.'
['all this' refers to a rhapsodic description of alpine scenery encountered on a recent trip]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
'We have been reading the "Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo," & generally with much approbation. Nothing will please all the world, you know; but parts of it suit me better than much that he has written before. The opening - the Proem I beleive [sic] he calls it - is very beautiful. One cannot but grieve for the loss of the Son so fondly described. Has he at all recovered it?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen Print: Book
Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 8-9 February 1795: 'I have been reading the four first numbers of the Flagellant — they are all I possess — my dearest Grosvenor they have recalled past times forcibly to my mind...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey Print: Serial / periodical
From the 1806-1840 Commonplace book of an unknown reader. Transcription of 'March to Moscow, Southey', beginning, 'Buonaparte he would set out/ For a summer excursion to Moscow...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: anon
'a little reading of Southey's "Colloquies" with which I was much pleased.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin Print: Book
'The "Lakers," as Byron called them, were making themselves strongly felt [in 1812], and (at this moment) Southey most strongly of all. So Annabella waded through Madoc. She found some passages wearisome, but was convinced that Southey would one day be ranked high "among the ancient poets." Her prophecy may have come true, for it is impossible to tell what she meant by it. She was often guilty of this woolly kind of writing.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke Print: Book
A letter from Southey, malcontent about Murray having accomplished the change in the Quarterly without speaking to him and quoting the twaddle of some old woman, male or female, about Lockhart's earlier jeux d'espirt but concluding most kindly that in regard to my daughter and me he did not mean to withdraw. That he has done the yeoman's service to the Review is certain - and his genius, his universal reading, his powers of regular industry and at the outset a name which though less generally popular than it deserves is still to respectable to be withdrawn without injury.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Manuscript: Letter
From the Commonplace book of Mrs Austen of Ensbury: Transcription of '“The Well of St Keyne” [unattributed, but by Southey] beginning 'A well there is in the West Country, / And a cleverer one never was seen…’
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Austen
Thursday, 19 October 1826:
'I rose at my usual time [7 am] but could not write so read Southey['s] History of the Peninsular War. It is very good indeed, honest English good principle in every line, but there are many prejudices and there is a tendency to augment a work already too long by saying all that can be said of the history of ancient times appertaining to every place mentioned.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott Print: Book
S. T. Coleridge to John Murray, 26 March 1817:
'I read Southey's article [...] It is, in my judgement, a very masterly article.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Serial / periodical
'It is a very clear, agreeably-written narrative and though often partial & one-sided, in a good spirit on the whole & with enlightened views'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: G. W. F. Howard, Lord Morpeth Print: Book
'It luckily happened that “Kehama” was on board, and that many of the party, at my recommendation, had become familiar with it during the voyage. By the way, what a vast deal of foolish prejudice exists about Southey and his writings. Of the party on board some had been taught to think him a Jacobin, some an Ultra-Tory, some a Methodist, some an enemy to all religion, and some a madman. None had read a line of his works, but all were inclined to criticise him, and yet all, when they really tried the formidable volume, were delighted both with the man and the poetry.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Unknown passengers aboard East Indiaman Thomas Grenville, Ramsgate-Calcutta, total duration of voyage June-October 1823 Print: Book
'Did you ever read Southey's Life of Wesley? I am reading it just now and an [sic] painfully impressed — I might say depressed.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'When Southey becomes as modest as his predecessor Milton, and publishes his Epics in duodecimo, I will read 'em, - a Guinea a book is somewhat exorbitant, nor have I the opportunity of borrowing the Work. The extracts from it in the Monthly Review, and the short passages in your Watchman seem to me much superior to any thing in his partnership account with Lovell.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Print: Serial / periodical, Extracts from book in periodical.
'When Southey becomes as modest as his predecessor Milton, and publishes his Epics in duodecimo, I will read 'em, — a Guinea a book is somewhat exorbitant, nor have I the opportunity of borrowing the Work. The extracts from it in the Monthly Review, and the short passages in your Watchman seem to me much superior to any thing in his partnership account with Lovell.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Lamb Print: Serial / periodical, Extract from poetry book in periodical
‘Have you seen Southey’s Vision of Judgement!!!!! O Tempora, O Mores – And is it come to this?
And our dear good mother gave me such a hint to praise in her last letter!!! I came off, I think,
pretty well, saying that I did not think it the best of S.’s poems. Seriously speaking, our late
lamented Monarch did not deserve such an insult to his memory. ...’
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hartley Coleridge Print: Unknown
‘Of course I need not tell you...that I wrote the critique on the Pilgrim to Compostella in
Blackwood – that both the Professor and I have read "the Progress and Prospects of society" and
that we both of us admire it hugely'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hartley Coleridge Print: Book
‘Of course you have read his [Robert Southey's] colloquies – and with delight – but delight
mingled with sorrow, that so much beautiful truth should be intertwined, and in a manner,
interpenetrated with so much dangerous error – so much historical research accompanied with
so much inconsiderate assertion, such extensive and kindly observation of human life
unsupported by a profounder knowledge of human nature. The fictitious communion between a
living Poet of the 19th century and the ghost of a Courtier of the 16th is not a happy form for
such momentous arguments. It might have done well enough for a single dialogue, but two
bulky volumes of ventriloquism and falsetto is too much in all conscience – like this
voluminous letter of mine, you will say.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hartley Coleridge Print: Book
‘And what do you think of the "Doctor"? And what do you think of [John Gibson] Lockhart’s
wise conjecture, that I - even I - Hartley Coleridge, assisted by my father, am the author
thereof? A great compliment doubtless. It is a book! a book indeed. It must be delightful to
every one, and yet there are some touches that can only be felt by a few. I do, I confess, like
the Pantagruelism and the narrative, and the love, better than the good advice, or the religion,
or the politics, which may be all very good in their kind - (atho’ entre nous - the sort of
sectarian Church of Englandism which it breathes is any thing but - no matter) but the contrast
beneath the serious and comic parts seems to me too sharp. I mean to review it in
Blackwood[’s Magazine], and shall throw out some sapient innuendoes respecting the author,
just to lead wiseacres astray. ...’
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hartley Coleridge Print: Book
‘...I did not and do not, admire any of his [Robert Southey’s] laureate poetry - (except the
epicedian on the Princess, which is beautiful) nor agree with all his Articles in the Quarterly.
Entre nous, I think he has retained, even in his ultra-toryism, and high-churchmanship, the
fundamental error which made him, in the heat of youth, somewhat of a revolutionist; he
expects a great deal more from positive institutions than God ever intended they should
produce. ...’
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hartley Coleridge Print: Book, Serial / periodical
‘Talking of Doctors, there is another volume of the Doctor forthcoming. What a wonderful energy
of intellect, that can produce such a work under such circumstances. And yet, it is possible, that
poor Uncle [Robert Southey] finds a relief in writing happy nonsense. ...’
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hartley Coleridge Print: Book
