Appointing a poet laureate: national and poetic identities in 1813

Following the death of the incumbent Henry James Pye in 1813, the office of poet laureate came under scrutiny from press, court and government figures alike, and was eventually bestowed upon Robert Southey, having first been turned down by Walter Scott. This article examines the selection process and questions why, after a century in which the reputation of the office had fallen so far, it provoked such concern in 1813, and was suddenly thought an appropriate office for such pre-eminent ‘geniuses’ as Scott and Southey. Situating the selection process in the context of recent scholarship on national identity, cultural production and public opinion, it will be argued that the laureateship in 1813 can give us a unique and illuminating perspective on ideas of Britishness, patriotism and literature at the start of the nineteenth century, and of the place of court and public with regards to these ideas. In particular, the case of the laureateship demonstrates the variety, contingency and usability of notions of Britishness during the Napoleonic Wars: the ways that different agents invoked and thereby fashioned competing national identities in accordance with the needs of their discursive contexts. One possible constellation of Britishness, which came to the fore in the Liverpool ministry’s prosecution of the war effort and in the contest between the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, validated ‘traditional’ forms of cultural production and patriotism in which court—and laureateship—played a crucial part.