ABSTRACT
While Robert Southey's recorded dreams contain nothing of an explicit sexual nature, they do cast light on his attitude towards women. Southey was virtually brought up by women: his mother, his maternal grandmother and Miss Tyler. Something of the tensions created by the role of women in Southey's domestic life can be detected in his dreams. If sex and violence do not feature in Southey's dreams as much as might be expected, he dreamed of death far more often than would be anticipated. Southey's faith developed over his lifetime from scepticism and Socinianism to devout if unorthodox Anglicanism. To decide which came first, the dreams or the writings are something of a chicken and egg problem. Imagining a poem by day could lead to dreaming of it at night. Two of Southey's dreams he traced to poems he had been working on during the day. One of Southey's most notorious efforts as Poet Laureate, the ill-fated A Vision of Judgement, is really one long dream.
