Author: Robert Southey

Robert Southey (1774-1843) hailed from Bristol and flourished during an age of radical change, a brave new world that had already spawned the French Revolution, where the settled values of the early modern period were turned on their heads. Radicalism flourished among the intelligensia, and Southey was no exception. He was expelled from Westminster School for writing a seditious article on flogging. He then went on to Oxford, where he met Samuel Coleridge and, like many students before and since, explored the fringes of political reality. In 1795, Southey married Edith Fricker, and four years later settled in the Lake District of Cumberland. Becoming his home for the rest of his life, he shared this sylvan countryside with the Lake Poets—William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.