English poet, second wife of Robert Southey and daughter of an East Indian captain, Charles Bowles. She was born at Lymington, Hants, on the 7th of October 1786. As a girl Caroline Anne Bowles showed a certain literary and artistic aptitude, the more remarkable perhaps from the loneliness of her early life and the morbidly delicate condition of her health—an aptitude however of no real distinction. When money difficulties came upon her in middle age she determined to turn her talents to account in literature. She sent anonymously to Southey a narrative poem called Ellen Fitzarthur, and this led to the acquaintanceship and long friendship which, in 1839, culminated in their marriage. Ellen Fitzarthur (1820) may be taken as typical, in its prosy simplicity, of the rest of its author’s work. Mrs. Southey’s poems were published in a collected edition in 1867. Among her prose writings may be mentioned Chapters on Churchyards (1829), her best work; Tales of the Moors (1828); and Selwyn in Search of a Daughter (1835). It was soon after her marriage that her husband’s mental state became hopeless, and from this time till his death in 1843, and indeed till her own, her life was one of much suffering. She was not on good terms with her stepchildren, and her share in Southey’s life is hardly noticed in Charles Cuthbert Southey’s Life and Correspondence of his father. But with Edith Southey (Mrs. Warter) she was always in friendly relations, and she supplied the valuable additions to Southey’s correspondence published by J. W. Warter. She is best remembered by her correspondence with Southey, which, neglected in the official biography, was edited by Professor Dowden in 1881. Mrs. Southey died at Buckland Cottage, Lymington, on the 20th of July 1854, two years after the queen had granted her an annual pension of £200.
Besides the works already mentioned, Mrs. Southey wrote The Widow’s Tale, and other Poems (1822); Solitary Hours (prose and verse, 1826); Tales of the Factories (1833); The Birthday (1836); and Robin Hood, written in conjunction with Southey, at whose death this metrical production was incomplete. See also Literary Criticism.
