ABSTRACT
In May 1768 the Admiralty appointed Captain Cook to command a voyage to the Pacific Ocean. The process of 'taking possession' by British explorers, such as James Cook, in the eighteenth century can be examined in the light of a number of studies which deal with the significance of place in the shaping of human self-consciousness and national identity. In the 1790s, Robert Southey's desire for political and intellectual freedom led him to see America as a new unmapped and uncorrupted land where he could found a colony, settling and naming the wilderness, making it a home for him and his fellow Pantisocrats. Pantisocracy is often simply regarded as a moment of radical madness, a failed ideological scheme that played a minor part in the lives of two Romantic poets. In both Southey's and William Wordsworth's attempts to reinscribe places authorial egotism prioritizes the creator's own political or personal sentiments, thus demonstrating how loco-descriptive poetry could be romanticized and personalized.
