The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part 1: 1791-97

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Robert Southey (1774-1843) was a poet, essayist, historian, biographer, translator and polemicist. He was also one of the most controversial of all Romantic period writers. A high-profile, prolific and experimental author, he was centrally involved in literary culture in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. The brother-in-law of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the associate of William Wordsworth, he was closely acquainted with many of the leading writers of a key period in British literary history, a period that saw Britain beset by war abroad and political, social and industrial change at home. Although Southey was a prolific correspondent - writing to most of the major figures of his day - his informative, polemical, gossipy, revealing and eminently readable letters have never been published in full. Indeed, many of his surviving letters have never been published at all. My research project - 'The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part 1: 1791-97' - is the first part of a new eight part collected edition of these letters. It will be published by the international peer-reviewed electronic edition specialists 'Romantic Circles' and will make available in electronic form and via a free-access web-site the surviving letters Southey wrote in the years 1791 to 1797, a time which saw him go from disaffected schoolboy versifier to an adult identified as the leading radical, experimental poet of the day. By providing freshly edited and succinctly annotated texts of the letters Southey produced at the very beginning of his career, this research will transform current understanding of this key stage of his development, including his relationships with his direct contemporaries Coleridge and Wordsworth. It will advance knowledge of the culture of early Romanticism and awareness of the links between literature and radical politics in the 1790s. It will massively facilitate the work of future scholars and be of use to more general readers interested in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century British culture.