Robert Southey Robert Southey Robert Southey ( or (12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the Lake Poets along with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and England's Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 until his death in 1843. Although his fame has been eclipsed by that of Wordsworth and Coleridge, his verse still enjoys some popularity. Southey was also a prolific letter writer, literary scholar, essay writer, historian and biographer. His biographies include the life and works of John Bunyan, John Wesley, William Cowper, Oliver Cromwell and Horatio Nelson. The
Samuel Taylor Coleridge of a "Person from Porlock" – an event that has been embellished upon in such varied contexts as science fiction and Nabokov's "Lolita". During this period, he also produced his much-praised "conversation poems" "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison", "Frost at Midnight", and "". In 1798, Coleridge and Wordsworth published a joint volume of poetry, "Lyrical Ballads", which proved to be the starting point for the English romantic age. Wordsworth may have contributed more poems, but the real star of the collection was Coleridge's first version of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". It was the longest work and drew more