SOURCE: “Southey's ‘The Three Bears’: Irony, Anonymity, and Editorial Ineptitude,” in Charles Lamb Bulletin, Vol. 97, January, 1997, pp. 41-42.

In the following essay, Misenheimer notes that, although Southey is not considered a major author of the Romantic period, he contributed important works, including his children's story “The Three Bears,” which has become so entrenched in our literary consciousness that some editors have mistakenly believed its anonymity is due to its origins being lost to time.

In another age, Robert Southey might well have received more attention and achieved a higher status. Because he was a contemporary of such literary greats as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats and Shelley, he stands in the second line of literary figures of that era with such worthies as Lamb, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and Thomas Hood. In every literary genre upon which he concentrated, Southey was immensely prolific. His political works fill six volumes, his...