One of the ‘Ladies of Llangollen’. A member of an Anglo-Irish family, in 1780 she set up home with Eleanor Butler at Plas Newydd on the outskirts of Llangollen, a major staging post on the route from England to Ireland. Their relationship intrigued their peers and has continued to attract speculation. Although Ponsonby and Butler lived a life of retirement, simplicity and self-improvement, they received many guests – both admirers and tourists. They were visited by Southey in 1811.

Lexicographer, grammarian, editor, antiquarian and poet. The son of John Owen, he adopted the surname Pughe in 1806 after inheriting property from a relative. A leading member of the Society of Gwyneddigion and the Society of the Cymmrodorion, his publications included: The Heroic Elegies of Llywarch Hen (1792), The Myvyrian Archaiology (1801, 1807) and The Cambrian Biography (1803). In 1796–1797, Southey and Pughe engaged in a (pseudonymous) debate about the Welsh language in the pages of the Monthly Magazine. Later in 1797, Southey consulted Pughe about details for his Welsh-American poem Madoc. Pughe susbsequently became one of the principal disciples of the self-proclaimed prophet Joanna Southcott.

Unitarian minister and writer on theological history. He was the younger brother of Owen Rees. Southey corresponded with him in 1809 over the Annual Review, which Rees edited for that year.

Married John Rickman in 1805.

Lawyer, banker and leading public figure in his native Liverpool, which he represented in parliament 1806–1807. Roscoe was a Unitarian and a radical. He was also an expert on Italian history and literature and collected a notable library and series of Italian paintings, as well as writing The Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici (1796). He corresponded with Southey in 1798 on the whereabouts of William Gilbert.

A Worcestershire family consisting of four brothers and three sisters. The death of Southey’s close friend Edmund Seward in 1795 was followed by that of his brother John (educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, MB 1795, and physician to the Worcester infirmary) in December 1797. Some time afterwards, the eldest brother, William (a lawyer, based in Ledbury, Herefordshire) shot himself. A fourth brother, whose name Southey does not record, was a ‘mere farmer’ of a ‘methodistical turn’. Of the sisters, one married Mr Severn (a clergyman) and two remained unmarried. In the mid 1790s, Southey was on good terms with most — if not all — of the siblings and corresponded with at least Edmund and one of the Seward sisters.

Wife of Major-General John Smith (1754–1837; DNB); grandmother of Charlotte-Julia Jephson. She visited the Lakes, including Keswick, in 1812.

Historian and poet. Born in Liverpool, he was educated at Eton College and Peterhouse, Cambridge. His appointment as Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge in 1807 was controversial and attributed to patronage by the Holland House set. He wrote poetry – publishing English Lyrics in 1807 – and took an interest in contemporary poets, including Henry Kirke White, whom he knew during the latter’s time at university. Smyth’s verse epitaph to White, which also praised Southey, was inscribed on a memorial to White in All Saints’ Church, Cambridge. Smyth and Southey corresponded about this monument in 1819–1820.

American Quaker, inventor and writer. He sent Southey a copy of his Gazetteer of the State of New York (1813), and the two corresponded in 1817 about Spafford’s novel, The Mother-in-Law (1817), which was set in the Lake District.

Officer of the East India Company. Son of John Strachey. Educated at Westminster (adm. 1787) and Trinity College, Cambridge (BA 1795; MA 1822). Writer EICS (Madras) 1796; Assistant in the Military, Secret and Political Department, 1798; Joint Assay Master, 1807; Private Secretary to the Governor, 1808; Judge and Magistrate of the Zillah of Cuddapah, 1809; Junior Secretary to Government, 1812; Chief Secretary, 1813; retired 1824. Strachey was Southey’s ‘substance’ (an older boy assigned to induct a new pupil into school rules and rituals) at Westminster School. During their schooldays, Strachey (perhaps in response to the scandal surrounding The Flagellant) was one of many acquaintances who treated Southey ‘like a scabby sheep’, dropping him. They were later only partially reconciled, but enough for Southey to commemorate Strachey’s departure for India in 1798 with a sonnet (‘Fair be thy fortunes in the distant land’) published in the Morning Post. Southey attempted to maintain their correspondence, but it had lapsed by April 1805 when he confessed that as Strachey had not replied to his letters, he would ‘not ... write to him again, nor in any way force myself upon him.’

A native of Hereford, Thomas was the business agent for Herbert Hill, Southey’s uncle. His job also involved him in the tangled finances of Elizabeth Tyler, Hill’s half-sister and Southey’s aunt. Thomas met Southey during the latter’s 1795–1796 visit to Portugal. Southey stayed with him in Hereford in 1798 and through Thomas gained access to the cathedral library. In 1800 Thomas married a cousin, a woman Southey greatly admired. Thomas died suddenly in 1802.

Anglican clergyman, Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, 1810–1828, and later Rector of Freckenham, Suffolk, 1829–1835. Tilbrook was on good terms with Wordsworth, near whose home at Rydal he purchased a cottage, the ‘Ivy Cot’. Southey corresponded with him over a number of charitable projects, including plans to help James Dusautoy and Robert Bloomfield. Tillbrook also published an extended critique of Southey’s use of hexameters in A Vision of Judgement (1821).

Banker, botanist and antiquary. He was born and spent most of his adult life in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. Educated in Norfolk and at Pembroke College, Cambridge, Turner married Mary Palgrave (1774–1850) in 1796, the same year he joined the family bank, Gurney and Turner. He used his wealth and leisure time to pursue interests in botany, antiquities, painting and collecting art, books and manuscripts, accumulating over 8,000 volumes. He published on a number of subjects, including botany, travel, architecture and antiquities. His wife and daughters, whose artistic skills had been honed by the tutelage of John Crome (1768–1821; DNB) and John Sell Cotman (1782–1842; DNB), often supplied illustrations for his works. After the death of his wife in 1850, Turner made a second marriage to Rosamund Matilda Duff (1810–1863) that caused a rift with his family and friends. Turner and his new wife moved to London. He sold part of his collection of books and paintings, and died in the capital in 1858. Turner wrote to Southey in 1816, enclosing an etching of the Laureate produced by his wife, Mary, and condoling with him on the death of Herbert Southey. (The Turners had themselves lost three of their eleven children in infancy.) Thereafter, the two maintained an intermittent correspondence.

The son of a butcher in Nottingham, White was a studious boy who, after being articled to a lawyer, learned classical languages and, with help from Capel Lofft (1753–1824 ; DNB), patron of Robert Bloomfield, published Clifton Grove, a Sketch in Verse, with other Poems in 1803. The book was violently attacked in the Monthly Review (February 1804); Southey then wrote to White offering encouragement. White also received help from evangelical Anglicans, who provided the means for him to study towards becoming a student at Cambridge. In 1805 he took up a place there, but his fierce regime of study exacerbated a delicate constitution, and he became ill and died. Southey then edited his Remains (1807), having been supplied with papers by White’s brother Neville. These were well received, went through several editions and established White’s reputation.

Writer. She was the daughter of Charles Williams (d. 1762) and his second wife Helen Hay (1730–1812). Her early writings included Edwin and Eltruda (1782), Peru (1784) and Poems (1786); the latter elicited a tribute from William Wordsworth, his first publication (‘Sonnet on Seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams Weep at a Tale of Distress’). She moved in the circles that included Anna Letitia Barbauld, William Godwin, Samuel Rogers and Anna Seward, and was a committed abolitionist. From the early 1790s she lived mainly in France, which she first visited in 1790, or, during periods when it was unsafe for her to be there, in Switzerland. Her first hand account of the revolution – Letters from France – appeared in 1790 and eventually extended through eight volumes and several, revised editions. She translated writings by Bernadin de St Pierre (1737-1814) and Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859). Other works included an account of the Hundred Days of 1815. After Napoleon’s fall from power, her home in Paris became a regular calling-in spot for English tourists. Southey visited her during in May 1817 during his continental tour.

Anglican clergyman and scholar. He was the youngest brother of William Wordsworth and, like his older brother, was educated at Hawkshead School and Trinity College, Cambridge (1792–1796), where he became a Fellow in 1798. He was ordained in 1799 and enjoyed a successful clerical career through the patronage of Charles Manners-Sutton (1755–1828; DNB), Archbishop of Canterbury 1805–1828, whose son Wordsworth had tutored. He served as Rector of Woodchurch, Kent, 1806–1808, Bocking in Essex 1808–1816, St Mary’s, Lambeth 1816–1820 and Uckfield, Sussex, 1820–1846. Wordsworth was elected Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, 1820–1841, where his length of tenure was not matched by his popularity or achievements. Wordsworth’s list of publications included an Ecclesiastical Biography (1810) and Who wrote Ikon Basilike? (1824). In 1804 he married Priscilla Lloyd (d. 1815), sister of Charles Lloyd.

Philanthropist and independently minded conservative MP for Devonshire 1812–1818, 1820–1831 and North Devon 1837–1857. He was a devoted supporter of the Church of England and friendly with Wilberforce. Southey first met him in London in 1817 and admired Acland’s character and (usually) his political conduct.

Son of John Aikin and nephew of Anna Letitia Barbauld. A Unitarian intellectual, writer and lecturer on chemistry and mineralogy and from 1803–1808 the editor of the Annual Review, the journal for which Southey wrote before he became a regular contributor to the Quarterly Review.

American painter and poet. During his time in Rome in 1805–1808 he formed a close friendship with Coleridge, and the two greatly influenced each others’ ideas about the fine arts. Allston lived in England 1811–1818 and gained some renown for his The Dead Man Restored to Life by Touching the Bones of the Prophet Elisha (1811–1814). Southey met him in 1813 and shared Coleridge’s admiration for Allston’s works.

Eldest surviving son of the solicitor, John Awdry (1766–1844), and Jane, née Bigg-Wither (1770–1845), sister of Herbert Hill’s wife, Catherine. Awdry was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, graduating with a First in 1816. He was elected a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, at the same time as Hartley Coleridge in April 1819. He later qualified as a barrister, was knighted in 1830 and rose to the Supreme Court of Judicature in Bombay 1839–1842. Southey first met Awdry in 1817 when he stayed at the Awdry family’s Swiss holiday home on his continental tour.

Poet, essayist and children’s author, sister of John Aikin and aunt of Arthur Aikin, Southey’s editor at the Annual Review. She married the Revd Rochemont Barbauld (1749–1808) on 26 May 1774. Barbauld and Southey met in 1797 and had many acquaintances in common, including George Dyer, William Godwin and Joseph Johnson. Barbauld was publicly linked with the literary and scientific experimentalism of Southey’s circle, and featured in the Anti-Jacobin satire ‘The Pneumatic Revellers’ (1800). She and Southey both contributed to the Monthly Magazine and the Annual Review and occasionally socialised, in particular during Southey’s time in London in 1801–1802. However, his attitude to her was ambivalent. He agreed with her advice to Coleridge (whom Barbauld admired and promoted) not to lose himself in ‘the maze of metaphysic lore’, but condemned the verses in which she articulated this as ‘trite’. He also punned on her surname, calling her ‘Bare-bald’ because he attributed to her a hostile review of Charles Lamb’s play John Woodvil; a Tragedy (1802) in the Annual Review for 1802, 1 (1803), 688–692.

Daughter of the Irish educational writer and engineer, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744–1817; DNB) and younger sister of the novelist, Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849; DNB). In April 1794 she married Thomas Beddoes, an acquaintance of her father’s. The marriage produced two sons (including the poet, Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849; DNB)) and two daughters, but proved unhappy.

The Bedford family lived at Westminster and Brixton. The household consisted of the parents, Charles (c. 1742–1814) and Mary Bedford, three sons (Grosvenor, Horace and Harry) and a cousin, Mary Page. Southey was on good terms with the entire family. He made use of the library in their Westminster home and wrote the first draft of Joan of Arc during an extended stay at their house in Brixton in summer 1793. Southey corresponded with Grosvenor and Horace.

Prominent English merchant in Lisbon, admitted to the British Factory in 1774. Southey came to know him well during his visit to Portugal in 1800–1801. He appreciated Bell’s wide knowledge of the country and benefitted from his connections to Portuguese intellectual life. Bell’s special interest was numismatics.