Madoc

by Robert Southey

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Genres: Poetry

116 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2005

About the author

Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate. Although his fame tends to be eclipsed by that of his contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey's verse enjoys enduring popularity. Moreover, he was a prolific letter writer, literary scholar, historian and biographer. His biographies include the life and works of John Bunyan, John Wesley, William Cowper, Oliver Cromwell and Horatio Nelson. The latter has rarely been out of print since its publication in 1813 and was adapted for the screen in the 1926 British film, Nelson.

Southey was also a renowned Portuguese and Spanish scholar, translating a number of works of those two countries into English and writing both a History of Brazil (part of his planned History of Portugal which was never completed) and a History of the Peninsular War. Perhaps his most enduring contribution to literary history is the immortal children's classic, The Story of the Three Bears, the original Goldilocks story.

Reviews

[Andrew Dumais · Rating 5 out of 5]

Southey's intended opus after his publication of Joan of Arc. His intentions were to have this epic rival The Illiad and The Odyssey. The poem gets bogged down often by Southey's writing style. If you intend to read it with any post-colonial leanings be prepared for a text rife with misinformation, cultural conflation, and political/cultural criticisms. His criticism of Roman Catholicism is also heavy-handed. This edition was good but for a more scholarly read I suggest the Pickering and Chatto version in their collection of Southey's works.