Poems, 1799

Southey, Robert, 1774-1843Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.6

Word count: 138K words
Chapters: 14

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Poems, 1799 by Robert SoutheyAuthor: Southey, Robert, 1774-1843,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Aug 1, 2005

Editor's review

This collection, Poems, 1799, is an important early gathering of verse by the English Romantic poet Robert Southey. It preserves poems from his youth and offers primary texts for understanding the formation of the Lake Poets. Southey's poetry combines the rational reflection of the Enlightenment with the emotional tension of early Romanticism; its subjects include narrative poetry, lyric poetry, and meditative long poems, and its language is relatively refined with regular metre. For readers studying the genealogy of English Romantic literature or comparing Southey's writing with that of Coleridge and Wordsworth, this book is an indispensable source. The Project Gutenberg edition is a public-domain English e-book, convenient for searching and citation, and suitable as a base text for academic reading. General readers curious about the rhetorical habits and intellectual atmosphere of late eighteenth-century English poetry may also gain a direct sense of them here; note, however, that its style is somewhat distant from modern taste and is best read at a slower pace.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Literary specialists studying English Romantic poetry and the Lake Poets
Students who need original English-language sources for essays or textual analysis
Readers interested in the intellectual transition from Enlightenment to Romanticism in the late eighteenth century

Not a good fit for

Casual readers looking for tightly plotted modern fiction
Beginners whose English reading ability is not yet sufficient for the syntax of classical poetry

Reading tips

Begin with the shorter lyric poems listed in the contents, then move on to the longer narrative poems, gradually adjusting to Southey's metre.
Read alongside contemporary works by Wordsworth and Coleridge, noting differences in subject matter and tone among the three.
Consult notes or reference works for unfamiliar allusions, so that individual difficulties do not interrupt the reading as a whole.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this the original English edition, and how difficult is it?

Yes. This is a public-domain English e-book released by Project Gutenberg, with the original text in late eighteenth-century English poetry. The language is refined and the syntax relatively complex, with historical and literary allusions of the period; non-native English readers will need a certain vocabulary and patience, and are advised to use notes or a reference translation.

Who was Southey, and why is his early poetry collection worth reading?

Robert Southey was one of the Lake Poets of the English Romantic period and was appointed Poet Laureate. This 1799 collection reflects the craft and thought of his youth and is an important text for examining the formation of the Lake School and comparing his work with that of Coleridge and Wordsworth.

Is the electronic edition suitable for citation, and what should be noted when using it?

Public-domain e-books may be used for reading and research citation, but layout and page numbers vary by edition. When quoting lines in academic writing, check them against the original text and cite the title and line numbers from this electronic edition rather than relying solely on automatically generated page numbers.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Southey, Robert, 1774-1843 Author

Robert Southey (1774-1843) was an English poet and prose writer of the Romantic period, and eight of his works are currently included in this library. His output spans narrative poetry, lyric verse, and biographical prose. His representative works include the long poems Thalaba the Destroyer and The Curse of Kehama, as well as The Life of Horatio, Lord Nelson. He also wrote Sir Thomas More, or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, along with several poetry collections containing sonnets, odes, and elegies. Southey's long poems often draw on exotic legends and myth, with expansive imagination and densely elaborated verse, while his prose and biographies are clearly organized and argumentative in tone. Public information is limited, so no further inferences are made here about the details of his life or his literary school; readers may learn about his choice of subjects and writing style from the works listed above.