In 1809 Robert Southey outlined the economic realities facing any would-be ‘man of letters’, that only ‘two branches’ of literature provided ‘adequate remuneration … writing for reviews, or for the stage’. Whilst he did not dismiss the profitable opportunities to be found in writing for the theatre, the larger part of his analysis was devoted to a craft he knew much better – ‘well paid’ reviewing. As he explained, ‘Reviewing is not an unpleasant task’ and after a decade of contributing to periodicals he was an old hand:

After such relatively humble beginnings, by the late 1800s Southey was in demand by the reviews and (or so he claimed) even able to choose which ones he wrote for. In 1807 he ‘refused ten guineas per sheet’ from the Edinburgh on ‘the grounds of my total dissent from all its principles of morals and politics as well as taste’. Within less than two years, he did, however, accept the offer of work from another periodical – the Quarterly – and by 1810 noted that the money it brought in was ‘a great help … They pay ten guineas a sheet, and for the life of Nelson … twenty’.