Robert Southey (1774–1843) was briefly involved with the utopian schemes of young Wordsworth and Coleridge and is usually classed with them as one of the “Lake Poets”, the early generation of English Romantics. His turn to Conservatism was more marked than that of the others, and involved his appointment as Poet Laureate in 1807. The younger Romantics attacked him as a traitor to the cause of liberty, and the anonymous republication, in 1817, of his radical 1794 play Wat Tyler (on the 14th-century peasant revolt) was an acute embarrassment and lead to a landmark court case.

While either Southey’s politics nor his lyrical production secured his literary standing, his production shows remarkable instances of early and prolific literary historicism. These works involve the epic poem Joan of Arc (1796), a version of the Sæmundr Edda (Icelandic poetry, 1797), and Madoc (1805; a poetic version of the Welsh legend on the discovery of America). His edition of Malory’s Morthe Darthur (1817) may count as the beginning of the Romantic reception of Arthurian legend. In addition, Southey’s familiarity with Spain and Portugal (where he resided for a few years) led to Spanish-themed work which helped subvert the long-standing leyenda negra and to establish a Romantic appreciation of Spain in English literature: Chronicle of the Cid, from the Spanish (1808) and Roderick the last of the Goths (1814).