Robert Southey was born in Bristol on 12 August 1774 and died at Greta Hall, near Keswick in the Lake District, on 21 March 1843. During his lifetime he was among the most visible men of letters in Britain: a poet, historian, biographer, reviewer, editor, translator, political commentator, children’s writer, and, from 1813 until his death, Poet Laureate. Yet posterity has treated him unevenly. He is often remembered…
“It is not the settling of a cash account that can cancel obligations like these.”
Neighbourhood:
Hymn Writers, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Wonder
In the flickering light of Elizabethan England, where the flames of religious persecution cast long shadows over the realm of Queen Elizabeth I, Robert Southwell stands as one of the most compelling figures in English literary and spiritual history. Born around 1561 and executed in 1595 at the tender age of thirty-three or thirty-four, Southwell was at once a Jesuit priest risking everything for his faith, a clandest…
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Fear
