account of its bloodthirstiness: ‘The murder glen’ (p. 222 below). She found this ‘deep tragic’ style of writing by far the easiest ‘and by no means the least’, but her husband ‘called it “wicked writing’” , she told Anna Bray; ‘it made me laugh to hear him read and rail at the same time’ (November 1841: Rochester). This grim tale of incestuous adul­ tery, child abuse, wife-bashing and murder was actually one of her most popular works ever, being reprinted many times after its first publica­ tion in Blackwood's in 1836. It is a little curious that she chose to insert this accomplished piece of melodrama in their one joint volume, given his disapproval, and given its subject-matter: a small act of rebellion against his dead presence, perhaps? The volume a lso contains some of her finest short poems, apparently written in 1841 when she found time to reflect while Southey lay ‘in a blessedly tranquil state’ after the bouts of violence:

doi:10.4324/9780429459375-90

Chapter

account of its bloodthirstiness: ‘The murder glen’ (p. 222 below). She found this ‘deep tragic’ style of writing by far the easiest ‘and by no means the least’, but her husband ‘called it “wicked writing’” , she told Anna Bray; ‘it made me laugh to hear him read and rail at the same time’ (November 1841: Rochester). This grim tale of incestuous adul tery, child abuse, wife-bashing and murder was actually one of her most popular works ever, being reprinted many times after its first publica tion in Blackwood's in 1836. It is a little curious that she chose to insert this accomplished piece of melodrama in their one joint volume, given his disapproval, and given its subject-matter: a small act of rebellion against his dead presence, perhaps? The volume a lso contains some of her finest short poems, apparently written in 1841 when she found time to reflect while Southey lay ‘in a blessedly tranquil state’ after the bouts of violence:

Chapter

account of its bloodthirstiness: ‘The murder glen’ (p. 222 below). She found this ‘deep tragic’ style of writing by far the easiest ‘and by no means the least’, but her husband ‘called it “wicked writing’” , she told Anna Bray; ‘it made me laugh to hear him read and rail at the same time’ (November 1841: Rochester). This grim tale of incestuous adul tery, child abuse, wife-bashing and murder was actually one of her most popular works ever, being reprinted many times after its first publica tion in Blackwood's in 1836. It is a little curious that she chose to insert this accomplished piece of melodrama in their one joint volume, given his disapproval, and given its subject-matter: a small act of rebellion against his dead presence, perhaps? The volume a lso contains some of her finest short poems, apparently written in 1841 when she found time to reflect while Southey lay ‘in a blessedly tranquil state’ after the bouts of violence:

ABSTRACT

Death itself held no particular terrors for her: she had long been accustomed to accept its presence in the midst of her life. Indeed, in some ways she had a friendly relation with death, using it as the springboard for many of her works in prose or verse; most famously, of course, in Chapters on Churchyards. Her childhood reading between the covers of the Reverends Kettlewell, Hervey, et al. appears to have nourished her natural taste in the direction, not exactly of the morbid, but certainly, the open-eyed acknowledgement of death’s propinquity to life, of ‘the populous dust’ beneath her feet.19 Twentieth-century readers are accustomed to the view that fully mature work can only come from writers who have experienced sexual fulfilment. Against this view may be placed another: that no writer is fully mature until he or she has looked death squarely in the face. Caroline Bowles Southey’s fine poem. ‘That’s what we are’, perfectly captures the shock inherent in the moment of apprehending one’s own mortality.