{"id":2515,"date":"2019-08-19T08:46:54","date_gmt":"2019-08-19T08:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=2515"},"modified":"2019-08-19T13:57:49","modified_gmt":"2019-08-19T13:57:49","slug":"stephen-copley-research-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=2515","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Copley Research Report: Stephen Basdeo on Robert Southey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Southey\u2019s \u201cHarold; or, The Castle of Morford\u201d\u2014The First Robin Hood Novel<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Stephen Basdeo, Associate Professor at the Richmond American International University (Leeds RIASA<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n

To find out how to apply for a BARS Stephen Copley Research Award, click here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

In August, thanks to a generous BARS Stephen Copley Research Award, between 12\u201315 August, I was able to visit to visit the Bodleian Library in Oxford to consult Robert Southey\u2019s \u2018Harold; or, The Castle of Morford\u2019 (Bodleian MS Misc. Eng. e. 21), written in 1791 and purchased by the Bodleian Library from the famous Bristol booksellers W. George\u2019s Sons in 1895.<\/p>\n

The manuscript\u2019s unassuming title obscures its significance somewhat, for this is, as far as I can ascertain, the first attempt by any author to write a novel featuring the legendary English outlaw, Robin Hood, as it predates Walter Scott\u2019s Ivanhoe<\/em> (1819) by 28 years.<\/p>\n

Along with a colleague, Dr Mark Truesdale, I am transcribing and publishing Southey\u2019s unpublished text with Routledge as part of its \u2018Outlaws in Literature, History, and Culture\u2019 series, and publication is expected in March 2020. The purpose of my visit, then, was to perform final checks of our transcription, such as making sure we had not misread words (young Southey\u2019s handwriting was not the neatest), for the Routledge edition will reproduce, as far as possible, exactly what was written by Southey 228 years ago.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bodleian MS Misc Eng e. 21<\/em><\/p>\n

The manuscript is bound in a maroon binding dating from probably the mid-nineteenth century, with gold embossed title on the spine reading \u2018Juvenilia Romances MSS. Southey\u2019. Binding the manuscript in this way has the obvious advantage of keeping all of the leaves together but this has also meant that some words on the margins have been obscured due to the tightness of the binding and the fact that Southey often used the whole page, writing right up to the edges of the leaves. Another issue is that the binders also trimmed the pages at the top, bottom, and sides, meaning some words from the manuscript are forever lost.<\/p>\n

Luckily for us, someone in the Victorian era faithfully copied out Southey\u2019s tale in full (presumably before it was bound), which meant that deficiencies in the original manuscript (Bodleian MS Misc Eng e. 21) could be cross-checked with the copy (Bodleian MS Misc Eng e. 114), which was donated by Baroness Paravicini to the library in 1927 \u2014 not every eighteenth-century scholar has the luxury of having two manuscripts to check when undertaking similar projects!<\/p>\n

Southey\u2019s unpublished tale will be of benefit, not only to Robin Hood scholars, but to the eighteenth-century and Romanticism community at large. In it we find poetry written by Southey which he never published, with some of the poetry, written as it was by a 16 year old boy, preoccupied with women\u2019s \u2018charms\u2019:<\/p>\n

And oft beneath the glassy wave
\nHer dainty limbs would hide
\nAnd oft above the waves appeared
\nHer gently heaving breast
\nThat charm alone exposed to view
\nThe waves obscured the rest
\nCome, Launcelot the nymph exclaimed
\nTis now the time for love
\nFor silent is the midnight hour
\nAnd pleasant is the grove
\nWith that she leaped from out the wave
\nExposing all her charms
\nCome, Launcelot again she cried
\nCome riot in my arms (55v\u201356r)<\/p>\n

Southey wrote his novel before his political \u2018radicalisation\u2019 in 1794, after meeting with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Yet in \u2018Harold\u2019, we do find that even by the age of 16, Southey had developed a social conscience. For example\u2014and the novel is barely historicised\u2014the Robin Hood considers himself as \u2018the overseer of the poor rates\u2019, and delights in levying contributions from the richest in society and redistributing wealth to the humblest class of people (14v). And the forest society of Sherwood is an egalitarian one, where even King Richard, who has ventured back to England in disguise and joined the outlaws, thinks himself neither above nor below any of the other outlaws.<\/p>\n

Scholars will not have to wait too long to read Southey\u2019s novel, and I am grateful to the British Association for Romantic Studies for providing me with funding to travel to Oxford and ensure that all of mine and Mark\u2019s transcriptions were correct so we can present scholars with an accurate version of what Southey originally wrote and, if they want to consult Southey\u2019s juvenile tale, not have to make an expensive trip to Oxford themselves.<\/p>\n

Dr Stephen Basdeo<\/em><\/p>\n

20th August 2018<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Southey\u2019s \u201cHarold; or, The Castle of Morford\u201d\u2014The First Robin Hood Novel By Stephen Basdeo, Associate Professor at the Richmond American International University (Leeds RIASA). To find out how to… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2515"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2524,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515\/revisions\/2524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}