author
Robert Lovell
d. 1796
An early English Romantic poet from Bristol, this writer is remembered for sharp social criticism and for moving in the same radical literary circle as Southey and Coleridge. His life was brief, but his work and friendships place him in an interesting corner of the 1790s literary world.
1 Audiobook
Poems: Containing The Restropect, Odes, Elegies, Sonnets, &c.
by Robert Lovell, Robert Southey
About the author
Born in Bristol in 1771, Robert Lovell came from a prosperous Quaker family and became known as a poet in the years just before the English Romantic movement fully took shape. He is especially associated with Bristol: A Satire, a poem that attacked the moral corruption of the city’s merchant culture and its ties to the slave trade.
Lovell was closely connected with fellow writers Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was part of the idealistic circle around the plan for "Pantisocracy," a utopian community the group hoped to build in America. His marriage to Mary Fricker also linked him to the same family circle that connected these poets.
He died young, in 1796, while still in his twenties. Because of that short life, his reputation is smaller than those of some of his friends, but he remains a notable figure for readers interested in the radical, hopeful, and politically charged beginnings of British Romantic poetry.