Robert Southey

Born in Bristol on August 12, 1774, he became part of the first generation of English Romantic writers and was closely linked with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Although remembered mainly as a poet, he was astonishingly productive across many forms, writing epics, histories, biographies, essays, and prose works for a wide reading public.

His career gradually moved from youthful radicalism to literary establishment. In 1813 he was appointed Poet Laureate, a post he held until his death, and he spent much of his adult life at Keswick in the Lake District, where he built a reputation as one of the best-known men of letters of his time.

Modern readers often meet him through poems and through the classic story The Story of the Three Bears, long associated with his name. He died on March 21, 1843, leaving behind a body of work that shows both the ambition and the range of the Romantic age.