Writing the Empire:

Robert Southey and Romantic Colonialism

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Carol Bolton

The Enlightenment World

Bolton examines a broad range of Robert Southey’s writing to explore the relationship between Romantic literature and colonial politics during the expansion of Britain’s second empire.

After decades of neglect, Southey’s centrality to Romantic period culture is at last being recognized. Bolton’s study draws upon a wide range of interdisciplinary materials to consider the impact of his work upon nineteenth-century views of empire. She situates Southey’s histories, biographies, journalism and epic poetry within their historical and geographical contexts to argue that his widely transmitted views on leadership, duty and global responsibility constituted a moral imperialism that formed Victorian values.

Sample pages

• Writing the Empire: Introduction
• Writing the Empire: Index

Readership

Literature, Poetry, Romanticism, Empire Studies

Contents

Introduction
1 ‘Once more I will cry aloud and spare not’: Southey’s Responses to the African Slave Trade
2 ‘Taking possession’: Southey’s and Wordsworth’s Romantic America
3 ‘Eden’s happy vale’: Romantic Representations of the South Pacific
4 Thalaba the Destroyer: Southey’s ‘Arabian Romance’
5 The Curse of Kehama: Missionaries, Mythology and Empire
Conclusion

Reviews

'This is a well-written and scrupulously researched scholarly monograph which will become essential reading for both academics and students in the field...an invaluable addition to a cluster of very significant recent publications and research signalling the reassessment of the poet's marginal standing in romantic-period literature and culture.'
– Ourania Chatsiou, BARS Bulletin & Review

'Writing the Empire is an important book. Bolton’s readings are careful, thoroughly documented and illuminated by some detailed consideration of Southey’s correspondence and literary journalism. It will inspire and intensify further scholarly debate while the Southeyan recuperation goes on apace.'
– Michael J Franklin, Byron Journal

Related titles

• Dialogue, Didacticism and the Genres of Dispute: Literary Dialogues in the Age of Revolution
• Letters from England: by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella
• Robert Southey: Later Poetical Works, 1811–1838
• Robert Southey: Poetical Works 1793–1810
• Romantic Localities: Europe Writes Place
• Romantic Marginality: Nation and Empire on the Borders of the Page

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