'will become essential reading for both academics and students in the field' BARS Bulletin & Review 'an important book. Bolton's readings are careful, thoroughly documented and illuminated by some detailed consideration of Southey's correspondence and literary journalism. It will inspire and intensify further scholarly debate while the Southeyan recuperation goes on apace.' Byron Journal

• figu1 William Henry Egleton, engraving after John Opie, Robert Southey (1806). By permission of the Wordsworth Trust., Carol Bolton; Chapter 1 ‘Once More I Will Cry Aloud and Spare Not’: Southey’s Responses to the African Slave Trade, Carol Bolton; Chapter 2 ‘Taking Possession’: Southey’s and Wordsworth’s Romantic America, Carol Bolton; Chapter 3 ‘Eden’s Happy Vale’: Romantic Representations of the South Pacific, Carol Bolton; Chapter 4 Thalaba the Destroyer: Southey’s ‘Arabian Romance’, Carol Bolton; Chapter 5 The Curse of Kehama: Missionaries, ‘Monstrous Mythology’ and Empire, Carol Bolton;