NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERARY MANUSCRIPTS

Part 5: Papers of Caroline Bowles (1787-1854) and Robert Southey (1774-1843) from the British Library, London

This is a key source for all scholars of Romanticism and 19th century poetry.

• For those studying women writers here are the poetical notebooks, 1806-1836, of Caroline Bowles, the New Forest poet who later married Southey.
• These are notebooks used in compiling Solitary Hours (1826), Tales of the Factories (1833) and her Poetical Works (1867).
• There are also a wide range of literary manuscripts by Robert Southey, friend of Coleridge and Wordsworth, and Poet Laureate, 1813-1843.
• We include Southey’s oriental-gothic poem The Curse of Kehama; his epic Madoc; Thalaba the Destroyer; Carmen Funebre; A Tale of Paraguay; and The Devil’s Thoughts written with Coleridge.
• Finally there is a rich correspondence which features Coleridge, Wordsworth, Thomas Clarkson, James Hogg, Walter Savage Lander and others, and some of Southey’s literary criticism.