ABSTRACT
In biography and autobiography Robert Southey found his most congenial and successful medium. Southey's biography was an expansion of a biographical essay which he had written for the Quarterly Review for the issue of February, 1810. Southey was unacquainted with any of the principals so that he relied upon published sources. Southey's sympathy and admiration for Nelson were clearly apparent, and perhaps without realizing the fact, his own life had certain parallels with Nelson's. Southey's Life of Wesley, generally considered as second to his Life of Nelson, is not only a life of Welsey but also a history of the rise of Methodism. In the autumn of 1833 the publishing firm of Baldwin and Cradock approached Southey with the request that he undertake an edition of the works of William Cowper for the sum of one thousand guineas. Southey's fifteen-volume edition of Cowper was reprinted in eight volumes in the Bohn Library in 1853–5.
