In another age, Robert Southey might well have received more attention and achieved a higher status. Because he was a contemporary of such literary greats as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats and Shelley, he stands in the second line of literary figures of that era with such worthies as Lamb, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and Thomas Hood. In every literary genre upon which he concentrated, Southey was immensely prolific. His political works fill six volumes, his poetic works fill ten volumes, and his letters (the one genre he never intended for publication) fill eight volumes. He wrote constantly, always conscious of two paramount issues. One was his own need to maintain his personal integrity by writing well and accurately. The other overriding force was his perpetual need for money, caused not by profligacy or greed but rather by his noble assumption of financial responsibility for Coleridge's family as well as his own.

Despite his failure to attain the first rank of literary greatness, Southey must always hold an important place in literary history for four distinct achievements. First, for thirty years he was Poet Laureate. As such, he fulfilled without fail his obligation to write a poem to commemorate each significant event. Second, he wrote the magnificent and still definitive biography of England's nineteenth-century naval hero Lord Nelson. Southey's Life of Nelson is a classic; according to David Perkins, ‘his prose … equals any written during the period, and it has qualities that are refreshing and unexpected—a direct simplicity, a manly and honest frankness.’¹ Third, Southey had a close, continuing though at times difficult relationship with Coleridge. The fact that they had married sisters probably accounted for Southey's willingness to assume the financial support of the Coleridge family. Certainly Southey admired Coleridge's genius and felt his great charm, but eventually he had to acknowledge the flaws in Coleridge's character which indeed injected much pain into his life. That he bore the burden of the Coleridge family's welfare with patience and fortitude attests resoundingly to the true nobility of his character.

The fourth achievement for which Southey must be remembered seems to be a fact not widely known even among those universally acclaimed as authorities in English literature. I refer, of course, to his authorship of ‘The Three Bears’, which appeared as a part of a much larger work, a miscellany called The Doctor which was first published 1837-47.² It was with a real sense of shock bordering on outrage that I noted in the contents of Volume Two of the child's icon of my youth, Childcraft, the volume of Stories of Fact and Fancy, published in Chicago by W. F. Quarrie and Company in 1931, in the place where the author of ‘The Three Bears’ should be listed, there is a blank space.³ Indeed, it is the first entry under the grouping titled Folk and Fairy Tales. The only justification for this unabashed display of ignorance by supposedly reputable experts in the field of children's literature which I consider credible is that by the time Childcraft first appeared in 1923,⁴ ‘The Three Bears’ had become so widely known that it was thought to be in a position similar to a number of other truly anonymous folk and fairy tales and to such other parts of literature for children as Mother Goose Rhymes.

Sad as it is to think that Southey does not always receive credit for his famous children's story, it is perhaps a compliment that even erstwhile scholars sometimes assume that ‘The Three Bears’ has been a part of our literary heritage for so long that its origin has been lost in the passage of time. In true Elian spirit, Mr Southey, we salute you as a modest, yet powerful and continuing purveyor of pleasure to children throughout time.

Notes

1. English Romantic Writers ed. David Perkins (New York, 1967) (hereafter Perkins), p. 536.

2. Perkins 536.

3. Childcraft, The Child's Treasury ed. Edward Farquhar (7 vols., Chicago, 1931) (hereafter Farquhar), ii. ix.

4. Farquhar ii. ix.