A01=David M. Craig
Author_David M. Craig
British politics
Category=DSBF
Category=DSC
Category=JBCC9
conservatism
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
industrialization
intellectual evolution
political apostate
Robert Southey
Product details
- ISBN 9780861932917
- Weight: 566g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 19 Jul 2007
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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A fresh and sympathetic interpretation of Robert Southey's changing social and political ideas, shedding new light on contemporary thought.
Like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey has been remembered not just as a romantic poet but also as a political apostate. In the 1790s he was fired by enthusiasm for the French Revolution, and was knownas a radical and a republican. By the 1820s, however, he was not only the poet laureate, but a fierce conservative who opposed the reform of Church and State. Yet at the same time his reactionary politics were mixed with anxietyabout the effects of industrialisation and the growth of poverty, leading some commentators to view him as a precursor of socialism and collectivism.
This book charts the development of Southey's social and political ideas inorder to throw light on the problems generated by the concept of 'romantic apostasy'. It draws on his poetry, histories, journalism and letters to show that his intellectual evolution was more complex than has previously been thought. In so doing it touches on numerous themes: theological politics, national character, the 'social question', providence and history, questions of race, empire and civilisation as well as the nature of republicanism and the evolution of conservatism. As such it is an important contribution towards the wider understanding of the intellectual aftermath of the French Revolution in Britain.
DAVID M. CRAIG is a lecturer in History at the University ofDurham.
David M. Craig is a lecturer in history at the University of Durham whose research interests focus on the political culture and intellectual history of Britain since 1750. His recent work on the intellectual aftermath of the French Revolution has resulted in Robert Southey and Romantic Apostasy, and he has also published on aspects of the history of republicanism, the monarchy and national character.
