Narrative

19. After publishing his first collection of poems in 1794, Southey completed a number of epic poems in the following years, beginning with Joan of Arc in 1796. Southey began composing Joan of Arc in 1794 with the hope that the poem would earn them enough money to help fund their Pantisocratic project. However, only a year after Joan of Arc’s publication, Southey and Coleridge abandoned their plans for starting a Pantisocratic society in Pennsylvania and Southey began studying to become a lawyer. The subject of Joan of Arc provided a historical analogue for the current events of the French Revolution, a theme he had previously explored with Coleridge in their poetic drama, The Fall of Robespierre(1794). Following a delay in publication due to insufficient funding and a lack of interest from subscribers, Joan of Arc was printed in 1796 along with amendments and additions made by Coleridge.

Despite the poem’s mixed reviews following publication, it received a second edition in 1798 with Coleridge’s notes demarcated and published separately. In the early nineteenth century, the poem saw three subsequent re-editions in 1806, 1812, and 1837. The 1837 is particularly notable for a reduction of the poem’s overtly political content and explicit republicanism. This volume of The Pocket Magazine of Classic and Polite Literature (v.9: 1822) features engravings based on Southey’s Minor Poems and Joan of Arc (1796), as well as Samuel Rogers’ Human Life (1819).