Too many scholars have, unfortunately, received little exposure, either in their training or in their subsequent careers, to the work of Robert Southey. Sometimes mentioned but almost never read, Southey has traditionally occupied a rather obscure position in nineteenth-century studies. Yet as Lynda Pratt points out in her introduction to Robert Southey and the Contexts of English Romanticism, Southey exercised a well-known and powerful influence on his contemporaries as a poet, historian, and political commentator. This collection of essays, then, is part of a recent movement in literary and historical scholarship that seeks to demonstrate the efficacy of including Southey as a major figure of study in the early nineteenth century.

As a thorough and wide-ranging examination of Southey's influence, Robert Southey and the Contexts of English Romanticism has the added virtue of an excellent introduction. Here, Pratt points out the “sheer diversity” of this author's literary productions (xxi) and offers an overview of the collection's organizational structure that further emphasizes this diversity: essays on Southey's development as a writer and his literary relationships are followed by closer examinations of some of the more neglected works; by studies of his connections to cultural developments like revolution, imperialism, and Orientalism; and by biographical forays into the poet's life and personal relationships. This is an introduction well worth the reading.

Although some of the authors of the collection write as Southey specialists, most include information of a type and kind that is easily accessible to the generalist or that indicates connections to larger areas of scholarship. For example, W. A. Speck's essay on Southey's dreams and Pratt's concluding piece on the writer's family relationships that affected “the posthumous editing” of his work (219) provide enough effective background information for even the nonspecialist to gain a better understanding of Southey as an individual. In fact, from a generalist standpoint, one almost wishes these essays could have been inserted as the introductory (instead of the concluding) chapters to the book. Tim Fulford's essay with the intriguing title of “Plants, Pagodas, and Penises: Southey's Oriental Imports” offers a thought-provoking overview and critique of post-Said Orientalism: according to Fulford, examining fictional works like Southey's Kehama suggests that the Orient as a concept was much more complex and unstable for European writers than has previously been assumed; it was, instead, a “moveable East” that could be applied to a variety of Other cultures (200).

Students of the nineteenth-century epic, or long narrative poem, will find three essays at the heart of this collection of particular interest. Carol Bolton, Nigel Leask, and Joselyn Almeida all suggest revisionist readings of one of Southey's most prized but controversial works, the narrative poem Madoc. These essays are particularly rich in content not only because they remind us of the importance of long, epic-style poetry to nineteenth-century authors and readers but because they offer new and challenging ways for understanding Romanticism in contexts outside the British Isles, western Europe, or even the traditional Orient. In a session on the Latin nineteenth century at the 2006 joint North American Society for the Study of Romanticism/North American Victorian Studies Association conference at Purdue University, the recent influence of Latin-American studies on Romanticism was emphasized. Just how this influence is operating can be seen in the three essays just mentioned. While Bolton and Leask tend to read Madoc (especially in its later versions) as a manifestation of the increasingly conservative Southey's imperialistic and nationalistic tendencies, Almeida chooses to highlight what she sees as the poem's “major break with Virgilian [or conquest-oriented] epic” (159). However, all three authors are in agreement on one of the more general implications of the poem—it is evidence of the ongoing Romantic debate about the place of America in the developing British Empire.

Literary scholars will be pleased to find a close engagement with text in several of the essays. “Feasts and Fasts: Robert Southey and the Politics of Calendar,” by Paul Jarman, and “Poemets and Poemlings: Robert Southey's Minority Interest,” by Nicola Trott, are two exemplary pieces of this type that refer often and effectively to the works they purport to analyze. Readers unfamiliar with Southey's writings will appreciate this attention to details that are too often omitted in current forms of literary criticism.

Single-figure studies sometimes run the risk of putting on critical blinders in an effort to resurrect their subjects from obscurity or ill repute. Pratt's collection is not immune from this tendency but is, nevertheless, pretty well balanced. All of the essays in Robert Southey and the Contexts of English Romanticism offer interesting and rewarding insights and, in general, make an effective case for devoting more critical attention to Southey as a major Romantic figure. Overall, this is a valuable addition to Southey and Romanticism studies and hopefully indicates that continuing scholarship will be written on this neglected author and his unique engagements with the literary and political issues of the early nineteenth century.