The conversation led to him believe that Joan of Arc would serve as a good basis for an epic so he began to work a plan for the poem and started composing lines.

The subject of the poem appealed to Southey because it reflected incidents surrounding the French Revolution that started in early 1793.

During Summer 1794, Southey attempted to find a publisher for John of Arc while taking up The Fall of Robespierre, a poetic drama about the French Revolution, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

He needed to get money for the project and he contacted Richard Cruttwell on 19 July 1794 to publish Joan of Arc for that end.

The poem was finally published by Cottle in 1796 (see 1796 in poetry) after changes to the text including a section added by Coleridge.

As the story begins, an 18-year-old Joan travels to Vaucouleurs, home of Robert de Baudricourt, with her uncle Claude.

Of these various incidents, the English's massacring French prisoners at the Battle of Agincourt and the starvation of the people of Rouen during a siege are mentioned.

The individual, as it turns out, is Conrade, who blames himself that Joan left her peaceful life to help a French court that was corrupt.

[6] In sparing the lives, the French are awarded by God with the collapse of a bridge that leads to many of the English soldiers drowning and a quick victory.

Joan meets with the Duke of Burgundy to warn him against a battle before she returns to her men to help bury the dead.

In terms of works relying on the general idea of a warrior woman, many such figures exited in epics: Virgil and Camilla, Tasso has Clorinda, and Spenser had Britomart.

When he heard of Marie Antoinette's execution in October 1793, Southey told his friend Bedford that he condemned the action although he held to his Republican beliefs.

However, the poem is still subversive since it described a French patriot fighting against the English that parallels the strife during Southey's time.

Why the poem is alone sufficient to redeem the character of the age we live in from the imputation of degenerating in Poetry [...] The subject is well chosen.

"[14] (A few days later, though, in a June 13, 1796 letter to Coleridge, after reading his opinion of the work, Lamb tempered his praise: "Perhaps I had estimated Southey's merits too much by number, weight, and measure.

")[15] Coleridge, in a 31 December 1796 letter to John Thelwall, admitted, "I entirely accord with your opinion of Southey's Joan [...] the poem tho' it frequently reach the sentimental, does not display, the poetical, Sublime.

In language at once natural, perspicuous, & dignified, in manly pathos, in soothing & sonnet-like description, and above all, in character, & dramatic dialogue, Southey is unrivalled; but as certainly he does not possess opulence of Imagination, lofty-paced Harmony, or that toil of thinking, which is necessary in order to plan a Whole.

Is it possible that a person of classical education can have so slight an opinion of (perhaps) the most arduous effort of human invention, as to suffer the fervour and confidence of youth to hurry him in such a manner through a design which may fix the reputation of a whole life?

"[17] The review continued: "To proceed to the execution of the design: we do not hesitate to declare our opinion that the poetical powers displayed in it are of a very superior kind, and such as, if not wasted in premature and negligent exertions, promise a rich harvest of future excellence.

Conceptions more lofty and daring, sentiments more commanding, and language more energetic than some of the best passages in this poem afford, will not easily be found:—nor does scarcely any part of it sink to languor; as the glow of feeling and genius animates the whole.

He is at present, he tells his readers, engaged in the execution of Madoc [...] We cannot, therefore, help expressing our wish, that he would not put his future poem to so hazardous an experiment as he has this, by assigning himself so little time for its completion.

"[20] Following this was an anonymous review for the 1796 Analytical Review that stated, "we learn with astonishment, that Joan of Arc, in its first form, in twelve books, was [...] finished in six weeks [...] We thought it right to mention a fact on which the author, by detailing it in the beginning of his preface, appears to lay some stress; but we wish entirely to forget it in our examination of the poem, and request our readers to do the same.

The story, upon which this poem is founded, is one of the most interesting in the history of France, and is, in several respects, happily adapted to epic representation.

"[21] The review continued: "The general result of the impression which the perusal of this poem has made upon our minds is this: that, although the poem has some redundancies, which the chastised taste of maturer years would have struck out; though a manifest incongruity runs through the piece, in ascribing to characters of the fifteenth century the politics and metaphysics of an enlightened philosopher of the eighteenth; and though allegorical personages [...] but ill supply the place of that grand machinery, which produced so powerful an effect in those epic poems, which have obtained the glorious meed of immortality; we, nevertheless, admire, the noble spirit of freedom, which is evidently the poet's inspiring muse".