Writing the Empire

Robert Southey and Romantic Colonialism

Carol Bolton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138663435
• eBook ISBN: 9781317315391
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Examines a range of Robert Southey's writing to explore the relationship between Romantic literature and colonial politics during the expansion of Britain's second empire. This study draws upon a range of interdisciplinary materials to consider the impact of his work upon nineteenth-century views of empire.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT WORLD:

POLITICAL AND INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF THE

LONG EIGHTEENTH Century

Series Editor:

Michael T. Davis

Series Co-Editors:

Jack Fruchtman, Jr

Iain McCalman

Paul Pickering

TITLES IN THIS SERIES

Harlequin Empire: Race, Ethnicity and the Drama of the Popular Enlightenment

David Worrall

The Cosmopolitan Ideal in the Age of Revolution and Reaction, 1776–1832

Michael Scrivener

FORTHCOMING TITLES

Adam Ferguson: History, Progress and Human Nature

Eugene Heath and Vincenzo Merolle

The Evolution of Sympathy in the Long Eighteenth Century

Jonathan Lamb

Adam Ferguson: Philosophy, Politics and Society

Eugene Heath and Vincenzo Merolle

The Scottish People and the French Revolution

Bob Harris

Charlotte Smith in British Romanticism

Jacqueline M. Labbe

Writing The Empire: Robert Southey and Romantic Colonialism

By

Carol Bolton

First published 2007 by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited

Published 2016 by Routledge

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605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© Taylor & Francis 2007

© Carol Bolton 2007

All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Bolton, Carol

Writing empirethe empire: Robert Southey and Romantic colonialism. – (The Enlightenment world)

1. Southey, Robert, 1774–1843 – Criticism and interpretation 2. Southey, Robert, 1774–1843 – Influence 3. Romanticism – England – History – 19th century 4. Great Britain – Colonies – In literature

I. Title

821.7

ISBN-13: 978-1-85196-863-3 (hbk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781315653211

Typeset by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited

Contents

• Acknowledgments
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• 1 ‘Once more I will cry aloud and spare not’: Southey’s Responses to the African Slave Trade
• 2 ‘Taking possession’: Southey’s and Wordsworth’s Romantic America
• 3 ‘Eden’s happy vale’: Romantic Representations of the South Pacific
• 4 Thalaba the Destroyer: Southey’s ‘Arabian romance’
• 5 The Curse of Kehama: Missionaries, ‘monstrous mythology’ and Empire
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index

For John, Catherine and John Jnr

Acknowledgments

Many colleagues and friends have been supportive and inspirational over the period in which this book has been written and I wish to thank them all. My immense gratitude goes particularly to Tim Fulford and Lynda Pratt for reading and commenting on large parts of Writing the Empire, as well as in the invaluable example of their own work, which has transformed Southeyan scholarship and made the task easier. Bill Speck has also been kind enough to comment on sections of the book and Ian Packer has positively assisted throughout the writing process. My thanks to Averill Buchanan for her thorough proof-reading and indexing contributions, as well as to Julie Wilson for her editorial services. John Goodridge, Lynne Hapgood, Claire Jowitt, Carl Thompson and David Worrall have all provided encouragement in various ways. The support of my family has been much appreciated, but my greatest debt of gratitude, for all aspects of the unfailing help he provides, is reserved for John Bolton.

For permission to reproduce the illustrations included in this book, I would like to thank the British Museum, London, the Syndics of Cambridge University Library, and The Wordsworth Trust. I am also grateful to the following for permission to quote from manuscripts held by them_ the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; the Berg Collection, New York Public Library; the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford; the British Library, London; the Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library; the Hispanic Society of America, New York; the Pforzheimer Collection, New York Public Library.

Some of the material that appears here was published, in earlier form, in: Lynda Pratt (ed.), Robert Southey: Writing and Romanticism , a special edition of Romanticism on the Net, 32–3 (November 2003–February 2004), gen. ed. Michael Eberle Sinatra, http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/; Lynda Pratt (ed.), Robert Southey and the Contexts of English Romanticism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006); Claire Lamont and Michael Rossington (eds), Romanticism’s Debatable Lands (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). I am grateful to the editors for permission to incorporate it.

List of Illustrations

• Frontispiece. William Henry Egleton, engraving after John Opie, Robert Southey (1806)
• Figure 1. Isaac Cruikshank, The Abolition of the Slave Trade (1792)
• Figure 2. Frontispiece...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Frontmatter 1
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• List of Illustrations
• Frontmatter 2
• Introduction
• 1 ‘Once more I will cry aloud and spare not’: Southey’s Responses to the African Slave Trade
• 2 ‘Taking possession’: Southey’s and Wordsworth’s Romantic America
• 3 ‘Eden’s happy vale’: Romantic Representations of the South Pacific
• 4 Thalaba the Destroyer: Southey’s ‘Arabian romance’
• 5 The Curse of Kehama: Missionaries, ‘monstrous mythology’ and Empire
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index