Of Precious Loobies, Bag Wigs, and Posthumous Orators: Leigh Hunt’s “Resurrection” of Robert Southey

Abstract

“Ods Bodyguards!” to quote Leigh Hunt parodying Robert Southey,”¹ my title seems odd; but the political, literary and personal antagonism between Southey and Hunt marks one of the oddest, most vitriolic disputes in literary history. It was conducted by eccentric, strong-willed personalities engaged in a unique clash over cultural and political power that helped define the character of Regency Romanticism. Thanks to the groundbreaking work of Nicholas Roe and Jeffrey Cox,² scholars of Romantic-era writing have become well aware of the great significance of this intense conflict, particularly in its wider role within the sustained culture wars between so-called Lake and Cockney Schools that determined much of the poetical and political character of Romanticism during the Regency era. The last decade has witnessed a substantial outpouring of new work on Hunt’s Cockney coterie and its various reactions against Southey’s apostasy from the cause of liberal reform to assume the government position of Poet Laureate in 1813. This important work has received a useful balance even more recently by an impressive surge of innovative editorial and critical work on Southey.³ Those developments, coupled with the current volume’s fresh outlook on the Regency years as a key, demonstrable phase within the history of Romanticism, has created a ripe opportunity for revisiting this famous quarrel between Hunt and Southey while also re-appraising both its internal dynamics and its overall impact on Romantic-era literary culture.