also drawn into the feud. Only the eldest daughter, Edith, married to the Reverend John Wood Wärter (later the editor of Southey’s letters), loved and honoured her stepmother, and before her own early death, supported her husband in his determination to issue a posthumous volume of Caroline’s collected works. So it was that in 1867 The Poetical Works o f Caroline Bowles Southey was published by Blackwood’s publishing house in Edinburgh.5 This edition of her poems, though not ‘complete’, nevertheless runs to about 300 pages including The Birth-day. Though it did not appear until 13 years after her death, the very fact that her work was deemed worthy of a collected edition by a respected publisher is significant, given that so few contemporary women poets were accorded such recognition.6 Yet today, very few people have heard of her; and of these, most have only the most general idea of her as a writer, though they may have heard of her relationship with Robert Southey. At the same time, his reputation has declined so radically over the last 150 years that such a connection is nowadays very likely to be construed as more of an encumbrance to his wife’s posthumous reputation than it was to her living self. While his was still a name to be reckoned with, however, it cast a different kind of shadow over hers, relegating her very much to a secondary position. This is borne out even by the title given to the useful (though not entirely reliable) memoir by a distant relative, Eleanor Oriebar, published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1874 simply as: ‘Robert Southey’s second wife’ (voi. 30, pp. 217-29). Mark Stor ey’s new biography of Southey,7 which appeared as this book was going to press, perpetuates the tradition among Southey specialists of dismissing the writerly aspect of his second wife. Storey does pay more attention to Southey’s relationship with Caroline and its long sub-romantic beginning than earlier biographers. But of her works he makes little more than passing mention: none appear in his bibliog­ raphy. But his emphasis on her devotion to Southey (which was certainly real enough) and his stress on its most breathless and adulatory moments, coupled with his omission of any reference to her robust humour and mischievous acerbity (though these are equally revealed in her pub­ lished correspondence) draws a one-sided and rather bathetic portrait of a woman whom one could hardly imagine capable of producing work of interest to today’s reader. Yet as a writer, her ability to move from prose fiction through verse satire (The Cat's Tail), dramatic monologue (Tales of the Factories) and verse narrative (The Birth-day) to fine lyric poetry, as well as her facility in expressing herself with down-to-earth immediacy and pungent turns of phrase in letters, make her one whose work should have a great deal of appeal for modern readers. Her most remarkable production remains

doi:10.4324/9780429459375-17

Chapter

also drawn into the feud. Only the eldest daughter, Edith, married to the Reverend John Wood Wärter (later the editor of Southey’s letters), loved and honoured her stepmother, and before her own early death, supported her husband in his determination to issue a posthumous volume of Caroline’s collected works. So it was that in 1867 The Poetical Works o f Caroline Bowles Southey was published by Blackwood’s publishing house in Edinburgh.5 This edition of her poems, though not ‘complete’, nevertheless runs to about 300 pages including The Birth-day. Though it did not appear until 13 years after her death, the very fact that her work was deemed worthy of a collected edition by a respected publisher is significant, given that so few contemporary women poets were accorded such recognition.6 Yet today, very few people have heard of her; and of these, most have only the most general idea of her as a writer, though they may have heard of her relationship with Robert Southey. At the same time, his reputation has declined so radically over the last 150 years that such a connection is nowadays very likely to be construed as more of an encumbrance to his wife’s posthumous reputation than it was to her living self. While his was still a name to be reckoned with, however, it cast a different kind of shadow over hers, relegating her very much to a secondary position. This is borne out even by the title given to the useful (though not entirely reliable) memoir by a distant relative, Eleanor Oriebar, published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1874 simply as: ‘Robert Southey’s second wife’ (voi. 30, pp. 217-29). Mark Stor ey’s new biography of Southey,7 which appeared as this book was going to press, perpetuates the tradition among Southey specialists of dismissing the writerly aspect of his second wife. Storey does pay more attention to Southey’s relationship with Caroline and its long sub-romantic beginning than earlier biographers. But of her works he makes little more than passing mention: none appear in his bibliog raphy. But his emphasis on her devotion to Southey (which was certainly real enough) and his stress on its most breathless and adulatory moments, coupled with his omission of any reference to her robust humour and mischievous acerbity (though these are equally revealed in her pub lished correspondence) draws a one-sided and rather bathetic portrait of a woman whom one could hardly imagine capable of producing work of interest to today’s reader. Yet as a writer, her ability to move from prose fiction through verse satire (The Cat's Tail), dramatic monologue (Tales of the Factories) and verse narrative (The Birth-day) to fine lyric poetry, as well as her facility in expressing herself with down-to-earth immediacy and pungent turns of phrase in letters, make her one whose work should have a great deal of appeal for modern readers. Her most remarkable production remains

Chapter

also drawn into the feud. Only the eldest daughter, Edith, married to the Reverend John Wood Wärter (later the editor of Southey’s letters), loved and honoured her stepmother, and before her own early death, supported her husband in his determination to issue a posthumous volume of Caroline’s collected works. So it was that in 1867 The Poetical Works o f Caroline Bowles Southey was published by Blackwood’s publishing house in Edinburgh.5 This edition of her poems, though not ‘complete’, nevertheless runs to about 300 pages including The Birth-day. Though it did not appear until 13 years after her death, the very fact that her work was deemed worthy of a collected edition by a respected publisher is significant, given that so few contemporary women poets were accorded such recognition.6 Yet today, very few people have heard of her; and of these, most have only the most general idea of her as a writer, though they may have heard of her relationship with Robert Southey. At the same time, his reputation has declined so radically over the last 150 years that such a connection is nowadays very likely to be construed as more of an encumbrance to his wife’s posthumous reputation than it was to her living self. While his was still a name to be reckoned with, however, it cast a different kind of shadow over hers, relegating her very much to a secondary position. This is borne out even by the title given to the useful (though not entirely reliable) memoir by a distant relative, Eleanor Oriebar, published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1874 simply as: ‘Robert Southey’s second wife’ (voi. 30, pp. 217-29). Mark Stor ey’s new biography of Southey,7 which appeared as this book was going to press, perpetuates the tradition among Southey specialists of dismissing the writerly aspect of his second wife. Storey does pay more attention to Southey’s relationship with Caroline and its long sub-romantic beginning than earlier biographers. But of her works he makes little more than passing mention: none appear in his bibliog raphy. But his emphasis on her devotion to Southey (which was certainly real enough) and his stress on its most breathless and adulatory moments, coupled with his omission of any reference to her robust humour and mischievous acerbity (though these are equally revealed in her pub lished correspondence) draws a one-sided and rather bathetic portrait of a woman whom one could hardly imagine capable of producing work of interest to today’s reader. Yet as a writer, her ability to move from prose fiction through verse satire (The Cat's Tail), dramatic monologue (Tales of the Factories) and verse narrative (The Birth-day) to fine lyric poetry, as well as her facility in expressing herself with down-to-earth immediacy and pungent turns of phrase in letters, make her one whose work should have a great deal of appeal for modern readers. Her most remarkable production remains

DOI link for also drawn into the feud. Only the eldest daughter, Edith, married to the Reverend John Wood Wärter (later the editor of Southey’s letters), loved and honoured her stepmother, and before her own early death, supported her husband in his determination to issue a posthumous volume of Caroline’s collected works. So it was that in 1867 The Poetical Works o f Caroline Bowles Southey was published by Blackwood’s publishing house in Edinburgh.5 This edition of her poems, though not ‘complete’, nevertheless runs to about 300 pages including The Birth-day. Though it did not appear until 13 years after her death, the very fact that her work was deemed worthy of a collected edition by a respected publisher is significant, given that so few contemporary women poets were accorded such recognition.6 Yet today, very few people have heard of her; and of these, most have only the most general idea of her as a writer, though they may have heard of her relationship with Robert Southey. At the same time, his reputation has declined so radically over the last 150 years that such a connection is nowadays very likely to be construed as more of an encumbrance to his wife’s posthumous reputation than it was to her living self. While his was still a name to be reckoned with, however, it cast a different kind of shadow over hers, relegating her very much to a secondary position. This is borne out even by the title given to the useful (though not entirely reliable) memoir by a distant relative, Eleanor Oriebar, published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1874 simply as: ‘Robert Southey’s second wife’ (voi. 30, pp. 217-29). Mark Stor ey’s new biography of Southey,7 which appeared as this book was going to press, perpetuates the tradition among Southey specialists of dismissing the writerly aspect of his second wife. Storey does pay more attention to Southey’s relationship with Caroline and its long sub-romantic beginning than earlier biographers. But of her works he makes little more than passing mention: none appear in his bibliog raphy. But his emphasis on her devotion to Southey (which was certainly real enough) and his stress on its most breathless and adulatory moments, coupled with his omission of any reference to her robust humour and mischievous acerbity (though these are equally revealed in her pub lished correspondence) draws a one-sided and rather bathetic portrait of a woman whom one could hardly imagine capable of producing work of interest to today’s reader. Yet as a writer, her ability to move from prose fiction through verse satire (The Cat's Tail), dramatic monologue (Tales of the Factories) and verse narrative (The Birth-day) to fine lyric poetry, as well as her facility in expressing herself with down-to-earth immediacy and pungent turns of phrase in letters, make her one whose work should have a great deal of appeal for modern readers. Her most remarkable production remains

also drawn into the feud. Only the eldest daughter, Edith, married to the Reverend John Wood Wärter (later the editor of Southey’s letters), loved and honoured her stepmother, and before her own early death, supported her husband in his determination to issue a posthumous volume of Caroline’s collected works. So it was that in 1867 The Poetical Works o f Caroline Bowles Southey was published by Blackwood’s publishing house in Edinburgh.5 This edition of her poems, though not ‘complete’, nevertheless runs to about 300 pages including The Birth-day. Though it did not appear until 13 years after her death, the very fact that her work was deemed worthy of a collected edition by a respected publisher is significant, given that so few contemporary women poets were accorded such recognition.6 Yet today, very few people have heard of her; and of these, most have only the most general idea of her as a writer, though they may have heard of her relationship with Robert Southey. At the same time, his reputation has declined so radically over the last 150 years that such a connection is nowadays very likely to be construed as more of an encumbrance to his wife’s posthumous reputation than it was to her living self. While his was still a name to be reckoned with, however, it cast a different kind of shadow over hers, relegating her very much to a secondary position. This is borne out even by the title given to the useful (though not entirely reliable) memoir by a distant relative, Eleanor Oriebar, published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1874 simply as: ‘Robert Southey’s second wife’ (voi. 30, pp. 217-29). Mark Stor ey’s new biography of Southey,7 which appeared as this book was going to press, perpetuates the tradition among Southey specialists of dismissing the writerly aspect of his second wife. Storey does pay more attention to Southey’s relationship with Caroline and its long sub-romantic beginning than earlier biographers. But of her works he makes little more than passing mention: none appear in his bibliog raphy. But his emphasis on her devotion to Southey (which was certainly real enough) and his stress on its most breathless and adulatory moments, coupled with his omission of any reference to her robust humour and mischievous acerbity (though these are equally revealed in her pub lished correspondence) draws a one-sided and rather bathetic portrait of a woman whom one could hardly imagine capable of producing work of interest to today’s reader. Yet as a writer, her ability to move from prose fiction through verse satire (The Cat's Tail), dramatic monologue (Tales of the Factories) and verse narrative (The Birth-day) to fine lyric poetry, as well as her facility in expressing herself with down-to-earth immediacy and pungent turns of phrase in letters, make her one whose work should have a great deal of appeal for modern readers. Her most remarkable production remains

ABSTRACT

Mark Storey’s new biography of Southey,7 which appeared as this book was going to press, perpetuates the tradition among Southey specialists of dismissing the writerly aspect of his second wife. Storey does pay more attention to Southey’s relationship with Caroline and its long sub-romantic beginning than earlier biographers. But of her works he makes little more than passing mention: none appear in his bibliog raphy. But his emphasis on her devotion to Southey (which was certainly real enough) and his stress on its most breathless and adulatory moments, coupled with his omission of any reference to her robust humour and mischievous acerbity (though these are equally revealed in her pub lished correspondence) draws a one-sided and rather bathetic portrait of a woman whom one could hardly imagine capable of producing work of interest to today’s reader.