Robert Southey, today the least known of the Romantic "Lake Poets," was originally the most prominent. He was also among the most prolific figures of his generation. Having written five major epics and hundreds of shorter poems--ballads, historical pieces, and lyrics on domestic pleasures--he was made poet laureate during the Tory administration in 1813. The position had lost much of its cachet but still indicated significant renown. Even George Gordon, Lord Byron, whose mockery of Southey's political apostasy is now better known than Southey's poetry, admired it immensely, as did Percy Bysshe Shelley, who, despite their political differences, respected him as "an advocate of liberty and equality .... a great Man." Indeed Southey's deep concern for the industrial poor helped to initiate the tradition of English progressive thought. He contributed well over one hundred articles to the conservative Quarterly Review between 1809 and 1839, and although he regarded journalism as "task-work" undertaken...