Robert Southey

Born in Bristol in 1774, Robert Southey studied at Westminster School and Balliol College, Oxford, though his student years were unsettled and marked by radical political enthusiasm. Early on he imagined bold social reforms with friends including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and that mix of idealism and restless energy shaped much of his early writing.

Southey became one of the central figures of the Romantic era, closely associated with Coleridge and William Wordsworth as one of the "Lake Poets." Settling in Keswick in the Lake District, he built an astonishingly productive career as a poet, essayist, historian, reviewer, biographer, and letter-writer, and in 1813 he was appointed Poet Laureate.

Although he is often remembered now for poems such as "After Blenheim" and for his place in the Romantic movement, Southey's work was much broader than that reputation suggests. He wrote on subjects from myth and war to exploration and religion, and his lively prose helped make him one of the most industrious literary figures of his age.