Robert Southey: Later Poetical Works, 1811–1838

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General Editors: Tim Fulford and Lynda Pratt
Volume Editors: Carol Bolton, Rachel Crawford, Ian Packer, Diego Saglia and Daniel E White

The Pickering Masters

Robert Southey (1774–1843) was once a prolific and celebrated writer of the Romantic school. Yet despite spending thirty years as Poet Laureate, Southey’s reputation has long been eclipsed by that of his contemporaries, Wordsworth and Coleridge. Research on Southey’s later poetry (and the violent responses it provoked at the time of its publication) has been hampered by the lack of a modern critical edition. These four volumes provide fully-edited, meticulously annotated texts of the poems Southey wrote during the latter half of his career. These volumes build upon the critical success of Robert Southey: Poetical Works 1793–1810 and together they form a complete edition of Southey’s poetry.

Volume 1 includes Southey’s shorter poems from 1811–38, as well as a number of earlier poems. Volumes 2–4 constitute the first ever critical edition of the longer poems written and published in the 1810s, 1820s and 1830s, including Roderick: Last of the Goths (1814), a best-selling epic romance. This was a period that was crucial for the forging of his own reputation, and saw him drawn into highly public, increasingly embittered controversies with contemporaries such as Lord Byron and William Hazlitt.

This critical edition allows a full reassessment of Southey’s work and his significance to Romantic poetry.

• Completes the only comprehensive critical edition of Southey's poetry
• Makes exclusive use of previously unpublished manuscript versions in textual variants
• Includes the first ever scholarly edition of Roderick, Southey's best-selling epic romance
• Full scholarly apparatus and consolidated index

Contents

Volume 1

Shorter Poems, edited by Carol Bolton, Ian Packer and Lynda Pratt

Occasional poems written and published 1811-38, including: ‘The Cataract of Lodore’, ‘Robert the rhymer's true and particular account of himself’, Ballads (‘March to Moscow’; ‘Brough Bells’; ‘Queen’s Mary Christening’; ‘Roprecht the Robber’; ‘The Young Dragon’), ‘Epitaphs’, ‘Epistle to Allan Cunningham’

Volume 2

Roderick: Last of the Goths (1814), edited by Diego Saglia

Volume 3

Poems from the Laureate Period and Inscriptions (1814-22), edited by Tim Fulford, Ian Packer, Lynda Pratt and Daniel E White

Inscriptions: Peninsular War (1814), ‘Inscriptions for the Caledonian Canal’ (1821), ‘Carmen Triumphale’ (1814), Laureate Odes (1814-20), ‘Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo’ (1816), ‘Carmen Nuptiale’ (1816), ‘Funeral Song for the Princess Charlotte’ (1817), ‘Wat Tyler’ (1817), ‘A Vision of Judgement’ (1819)

Volume 4

Fragments and Romances (1822-38), edited by Rachel Crawford and Tim Fulford

‘A Tale of Paraguay’ (1825), ‘All for Love’ (1829), ‘Oliver Newman’ (posthumously published 1847), ‘Robin Hood’, uncollected/unpublished poems

Related titles

• Letters from England : by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella
• Robert Southey: Poetical Works 1793–1810
• Romantic Marginality : Nation and Empire on the Borders of the Page
• Writing the Empire : Robert Southey and Romantic Colonialism

Leaflets

• Southey: Later Works: colour leaflet

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