I used to feel sorry for Robert Southey. He was an important writer and poet in his day. He was also the first Cumbrian to become Britain’s Poet Laureate.

He is not widely read now, though. In fact, he is probably the least known of the Lake Poets. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge have enjoyed far more fame.

But as 2024 marks the 250th anniversary of Southey’s birth, it seems high time to let him have the limelight. If nothing else, you might be intrigued to learn that he was the first person to publish the story of the Three Bears.

Southey wasn’t a Cumbrian by birth. He originally hailed from Bristol, where his father, who was also called Robert, was a linen draper. Robert senior wasn’t a successful businessman. He eventually went bankrupt. But Southey’s mother Margaret came from money, and her brother Herbert saw to his education. He provided the funds to send little Robert to Westminster School and eventually to Oxford University.

It is fair to say that Southey came of age at a topsy-turvy time. The French Revolution broke out during his first year at Westminster, and like many of his schoolmates he became a passionate republican. His politics landed him in hot water and so did his writing.

He was kicked out of Westminster for publishing a text that described corporal punishment as a demonic practice and accusing his teachers of doing the devil’s work. Being expelled only emboldened Southey. During his first year at Oxford, he wrote his revolutionary epic Joan of Arc, which celebrated one of England’s most famous enemies and denounced the national establishment.

Miniature portrait of Robert SoutheyMiniature portrait of Robert Southey (Image: Courtesy of Keswick Museum) Around this time, Southey started down the road that eventually led him to the Lake District.

It all started when a young Coleridge showed up in Oxford in 1794. He was introduced to Southey and the two of them got on like a house on fire.

Their friendship was forged by their love of poetry and philosophy as well as their political views, including their condemnation of Britain’s involvement in the slave trade. Soon, they were hatching plans to emigrate to Pennsylvania, in the United States, to establish a progressive, utopian community.

Those plans didn’t come to much. The two aspiring poets struggled to raise enough money, and Coleridge’s commitment to the project wavered.

In the end, though, their friendship led them to become brothers-in-law. Southey was wed to a Bristol seamstress named Edith Fricker in November 1795, just a month after Coleridge had married her sister, Sara. Those family ties are ultimately what drew Southey to Cumbria.

It began when Coleridge came to Grasmere to visit William and Dorothy Wordsworth in 1800. The three of them had already conspired to publish Lyrical Ballads, the little volume of poems that launched English Romanticism.

Portrait of three of the Southey children, Bertha, Katherine and Isabel by Edward NashPortrait of three of the Southey children, Bertha, Katherine and Isabel by Edward Nash (Image: Courtesy of Keswick Museum) Now, they were at work on a new edition of the book, and Coleridge arranged to rent Greta Hall, near Keswick, so that he could settle his family nearby. He and Sara already had two sons (a third had died in infancy), and they were soon to add a daughter.

During the intervening years, Southey had spent time travelling in Spain and in Portugal, where his uncle Herbert had connections, and started a career as a professional writer.

When he got back to Britain, he published a book called Letters Written during a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal, which sold well. Buoyed by that success, he began two new epic poems Madoc and Thalaba the Destroyer and started to form plans for a multi-volume history of Portugal.

By 1803, Coleridge was in a bad way. He’d become infatuated with another woman and was increasingly depressed by his marriage. He was often drunk and to make matters worse, he’d developed an opioid addiction.

He’d begun taking a locally produced laudanum called Kendal black drop to treat his rheumatism and got hooked on the stuff. Convinced he needed time away in a warmer climate, he called on his brother-in-law for help. Could Southey and Edith come north to Greta Hall to look after Sara and the kids?

Southey and Edith agreed to lend a hand. They were having difficulties of their own. Their only child Margaret died suddenly that autumn, leaving them distraught. Southey hoped that being closer to Sara would help rally Edith’s spirits, and so they headed north to Keswick.

Portrait of Edith Fricker Southey, whom Robert married in 1795, by Mary Matilda Betham, 1809Portrait of Edith Fricker Southey, whom Robert married in 1795, by Mary Matilda Betham, 1809 (Image: Courtesy of Keswick Museum) Shortly after they arrived, Coleridge hightailed it to the Mediterranean, where he spent the next few years.

Southey meanwhile took up the tenancy of Greta Hall and helped settle the ship of the storm-tossed Coleridge family. By this time, he was managing to make a living as a writer, and he arranged places for Coleridge’s two sons at a school in Ambleside. He also saw to it that the boy’s sister and their mother had a happier and much more stable home.

Southey loved children, and in the years that followed, he and Edith had several of their own. They’d lost their first daughter before they came to Cumbria. Once here, though, they welcomed a new daughter, Edith May, and then a son, Herbert, and then four more daughters, Emma, Bertha, Katharine and Isabel. Finally, for good measure, they added another boy, Charles Cuthbert.

It’s a good thing Greta Hall is a big place, what with so many little ones scampering about. But that’s clearly what Southey wanted. Whereas Coleridge was too distracted and drug-addled to be a good dad, Southey loved being a father.

He later wrote that “a house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment, unless there is a child in it”, and he wrote some of his most memorable works with young people in mind.

That’s certainly true of the version of the Three Bears story he published in 1837. Southey’s rendition is a little different from the one most people know now.

Watercolour The Cottonian Library, Greta Hall, 1838 when the Southeys lived there, by Hannah Felloby Watercolour The Cottonian Library, Greta Hall, 1838 when the Southeys lived there, by Hannah Felloby (Image: Courtesy of Keswick Museum) For starters, instead of Goldilocks, the culprit in Southey’s story is an old woman who ends up leaping to her death after she’s woken by the bears. Still, it’s safe to say that Southey is owed a good deal of credit for popularising the fairy tale.

Southey’s interest in writing for children didn’t stop there. Among his collected poems, you’ll find plenty of playful works like his Sonnet to a Goose and Ode to a Pig. In fact, one of his most memorable poems about the Lake District, The Cataract of Lodore, was originally composed for his kids. The poem, which reads like a nursey rhyme, playfully captures the sound and shape of Lodore Falls:

The cataract strong

Then plunges along,

Striking and raging

As if a war raging

Its caverns and rocks among;

Rising and leaping,

Sinking and creeping,

Swelling and sweeping,

Showering and springing,

Flying and flinging,

Writhing and ringing,

Eddying and whisking,

Spouting and frisking,

Turning and twisting,

Around and around

With endless rebound.

The poem goes on in that way for several pages.

Works like The Cataract of Lodore are part of the reason why Southey ended up being labelled a Lake Poet, but that poem was far from his first literary response to his adopted region. As early as 1807, he wrote an extensive and playful account of the Lake District under the assumed character of a travelling Spaniard named Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella.

Southey’s decision to write in the guise of a Spanish visitor gave him plenty of scope to poke fun at England and the English. Playful comments about bad weather and bad food abound.

But the character of Espriella also speaks to the depth of Southey’s interest in Iberian culture and history. He never did get around to completing his history of Portugal, but he did manage to publish a three-volume History of Brazil, which he finished in 1819.

By that time, moreover, Southey had become the first Cumbrian to become Poet Laureate. He took up that title in 1813, the same year he published his bestselling biography of Horatio Nelson.

That book helped Southey balance the books. Caring for both his family and Coleridge’s proved costly, and he needed the money. But his decision to write a biography about a national hero like Nelson also shows how much his politics had shifted from his school days.

Not unlike Wordsworth, with whom he became friends, the middle-aged Southey renounced the radicalism of his youth and became a fixture of the establishment.

That didn’t sit well with younger writers like Byron and Shelley, who mocked Southey mercilessly for ‘turning Tory’ and abandoning his progressive views. Byron was particularly scathing, and it wouldn’t be too much to say his condemnations contributed to the plummeting of Southey’s literary stock.

But the barbs the likes of Byron and Shelley hurled at Southey aren’t the only reason his writing fell out of favour. It can’t be denied that Southey’s politics in later life were problematic.

Like Wordsworth, he held bigoted views about Roman Catholics, opposed parliamentary reform and wrote in favour of suppressing the freedom of the press.

Watercolour, In the Garden at Greta Hall by W Westall, 1832Watercolour, In the Garden at Greta Hall by W Westall, 1832 (Image: Courtesy of Keswick Museum) To top things off, he told Charlotte Bronte that “literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life”. When you take all that into account, it’s little wonder that Southey’s stock has plummeted.

Yet, as better critics than me have pointed out, we should be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. We can still condemn some of Southey’s views while celebrating his talents as a storyteller. We’ve long cut that sort of slack to Wordsworth, haven’t we?

Here in Cumbria, moreover, we can also honour his longstanding commitment to our region. He may not have known it when he settled here in 1803, but Southey ended up deciding to spend the rest of his life here. He died at home at Greta Hall in 1843 and was laid to rest in Crosthwaite churchyard.

If you’re curious to discover more about Southey, then you’re in luck. Keswick Museum, which holds a wealth of Southey’s manuscripts and personal effects, has put on a special exhibition Reimagining Goldilocks: From Southey to Puss in Boots, which will be running until March 2025

You might like to take a walk past Greta Hall and visit Wordsworth Grasmere, which is always a wonderful place to explore our region’s links with the Romantic movement.