Letters Listed by Person Addressed

These pages provide information about contemporaries to whom Southey was connected, in particular, correspondents, family and friends.

Information about minor acquaintances and about contemporaries whom Southey did not meet or correspond with can be found in the editorial notes to individual letters.

DNB indicates that further information can be found in the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Hist P indicates that further information can be found in The History of Parliament.


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Winterbotham, William (1763–1829)

DNB

Baptist Minister. He was born in London and apprenticed to a silversmith, but after a conversion experience he became a Baptist Minister in 1789 and the following year moved to Plymouth to take charge of the congregation at How’s Lane Meeting House. In 1793 he was sentenced to four years imprisonment for two radical sermons he preached to his congregation. Winterbotham passed most of his incarceration in Newgate prison and spent his time in writing – he published an account of his trial, sermons and works of divinity and geography. On his release he returned to preach in Plymouth, moving to Newmarket in 1808. Winterbotham’s and Southey’s lives intersected when Southey visited Newgate in January 1795 to see the radical publisher James Ridgway, to whom his brother-in-law, Robert Lovell, had delivered a copy of Southey’s play, Wat Tyler. Southey stated that Ridgway promised to publish the play, but he heard no more about the matter. However, when Wat Tyler finally saw the light of day in 1817, Winterbotham swore to an entirely different version of events in an affidavit. He claimed that Southey had visited Newgate on a number of occasions in late 1795 or early 1796. Furthermore, Winterbotham asserted that on one of these visits Southey was accompanied by the radical journalist Daniel Isaac Eaton (c. 1753–1814; DNB) and that Southey gave Winterbotham the manuscript of, and copyright to, Wat Tyler, asking him to publish it as a pamphlet. Winterbotham claimed to have no knowledge of how the play had come to be published in 1817 and to still possess the manuscript of Wat Tyler. This dispute over the copyright of Wat Tyler meant Southey lost his application for an injunction to prevent its publication. Moreover, it opened the floodgates to a series of cheap editions, none of which paid Southey a penny. Ironically, the play became Southey’s bestselling work. Southey was convinced that Winterbotham had perjured himself, though he admitted there might be a possibility that Winterbotham had confused Southey with Lovell. The circumstances surrounding the publication of Wat Tyler remain something of a mystery. Further confusion was added to the picture by the essayist John Foster (1770–1843; DNB) who claimed in a letter to Joseph Cottle that two unknown people in Worcester had copied the play from Winterbotham’s manuscript without his knowledge and provided it to the publishers in 1817.

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Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759–1797)

DNB

Author. Southey was a great admirer of Wollstonecraft and dedicated ‘The Triumph of Woman’ (published in his Poems (1797)) to her. They met in London in 1797, where they moved in the same radical circles. Southey mourned her death in his 1797 poem ‘To A. S. Cottle’.

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Wood, Sara (dates unknown)

A resident of the Cumbrian port of Maryport. She was possibly a member of the Wood family, who were leading shipbuilders in the town. Miss Wood was the mortgagee of Greta Hall, Southey’s home, from 1815, and Southey paid his rent directly to her for a period from 1817 onwards. Southey corresponded with her intermittently on a professional basis.

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Wordsworth, Catherine (1808–1812)

DNB

Fourth child of Mary and William Wordsworth. Born 5 September 1808. Died of convulsions on 4 June 1812.

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Wordsworth, Dorothy (1771–1855)

DNB

Writer. She and Southey probably met in 1795 but their relationship only flourished after Southey and his family moved to Keswick in 1803.

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Wordsworth, Dorothy (‘Dora’) (1804–1847)

DNB

The eldest daughter of William and Mary Wordsworth. Dora was named after her aunt, Dorothy Wordsworth, and was exceptionally close to her father. She became the second wife of the poet Edward Quillinan, a widowed family friend, in 1841. Dora was a talented artist and also published a Journal of a Few Months Residence in Portugal, and Glimpses of the South of Spain (1847). She was part of Southey’s extended family circle, and was on good terms with his daughters.

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Wordsworth, Mary (1770–1859)

Wife of William Wordsworth. The Southeys became better acquainted with her after their move to Keswick in September 1803.

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Wordsworth, Thomas (1806–1812)

DNB

Third child of Mary and William Wordsworth. Born 15 June 1806. Died of measles 1 December 1812.

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Wynn, Mary (née Cunliffe; d. 1838)

Daughter of Foster Cunliffe, 3rd Baronet (1755–1834) and wife of Charles Watkin Williams Wynn.

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Wynn, Watkin Williams, 5th Baronet (1772–1840)

Hist P

Elder brother of Charles Watkin Williams Wynn. Like his brother, Watkin was a long-serving MP 1794–1840, though he never held political office. His main interests were the family estates in North Wales, which he inherited in 1789, and military life – he raised the Ancient British Fencibles in 1794 and saw service in Ireland in 1798.

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