Senior partner in a long-established and prestigious firm of London publishers. Southey began publishing with Longman and his partners in 1799 and their association continued until his final collection, Poetical Works (1837–1838). Southey often jokingly referred to the firm as ‘the Long Men’ or ‘Our Fathers’ (since their premises were in Paternoster Row). He also nicknamed Longman ‘Artaxerxes’ (465–424 BC) and ‘the King of Persia’ because the Persian emperor had been named Longimanus by the Romans.

Sailor and farmer. Southey’s younger brother and the one to whom he was in the 1790s closest. Tom entered the navy as a midshipman at the age of 12, saw action in several major battles of the French revolutionary wars (including Cape St Vincent and Copenhagen), was captured on one occasion, wounded on several others, and was made a lieutenant as reward for his bravery in the fight between Mars and L’Hercule on 21 April 1798. He was sent to the West Indies station in early 1804, court martialled for insubordination there, but was given a post under a different captain. He was made captain himself in 1811, but never commanded a ship. After he retired from the navy, he tried his hand at farming and as a customs officer. His last posting was at Demerara, British Guiana, and he died on shipboard on the return voyage to England. He married Sarah Castle in 1810 and produced a large family. Tom’s lack of financial stability meant that some of the burden of supporting him fell on his brothers Robert and Henry Herbert Southey. Tom’s knowledge of the navy and seafaring, and his observations of foreign climes, provided important information for many of Southey’s writings, including his poetry and The Life of Nelson (1813). Tom’s only publication was A Chronological History of the West Indies (1827), written with his brother Robert’s encouragement.

Civil servant and miscellaneous writer. The son of Charles Bedford (Deputy Usher of the Exchequer, as Horace Walpole’s substitute). Educated at Westminster School (adm. 1784), but did not attend university. Assistant clerk in the Exchequer Office, 1792–1803; clerk of the cash book, 1803–1806; clerk of the registers and issues, 1806–1822; chief clerk in the auditor’s office, 1822–1834. Admitted to Gray’s Inn, 26 January 1797. Bedford did not marry, despite regularly seeking Southey’s advice on his love affairs. Bedford and Southey met at Westminster School and their friendship endured for the remainder of their lives. Bedford had literary inclinations. He was involved in the ill-fated Flagellant (1792), contributed poems to the Monthly Magazine (1797) and the first volume of the Annual Anthology (1799), and privately published his translation of Musaeus, The Loves of Hero and Leander (1797). He worked with Southey on Specimens of the Later English Poets (1807) and contributed an unsigned notice of Southey’s Roderick, the Last of the Goths (1814) to the Quarterly Review. His other publications included A Letter to the Right Hon. William Pitt on his Political Experiments (1804, anonymous) and a Memoir of Barré Charles Roberts (1814).

Politician. The second son of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, 4th Baronet, and his second wife Charlotte Grenville. He was educated at home by a tutor, the Revd Robert Nares, and later at Westminster (adm. 1784) and Christ Church, Oxford (matric. 1791, BA 1795, MA 1798, DCL 1810). Entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1795 and was called to the Bar in 1798. He married Mary Cunliffe, daughter of a baronet, in 1806. Wynn had excellent family and political connections as his maternal grandfather was the Prime Minister George Grenville (1712–1770; DNB). He served as an MP for Old Sarum (1797–1799) and for Montgomeryshire (1799–1850). From 1806–1807, he served in the Ministry of Talents (led by his uncle Lord Grenville) as Under Secretary to the Home Office, and secured a pension for Southey, which he described as ‘the only benefit I reap from 12 months of office’. From 1822–1828, he held a cabinet post as President of the Board of Control. Wynn met Southey at Westminster and the two remained friends for rest of their lives. He contributed to The Flagellant (1792) under pseudonyms which included ‘St Pardulph’. Wynn (who was not personally wealthy) gave Southey an annuity of £160 from 1797, and Southey dedicated Madoc (1805) to him.

Statistician. Only son of Thomas Rickman, vicar of Newburn, Northumberland. Educated at Guildford Grammar School (1781–1785) and Oxford (matric. Magdalen Hall, 1788, and migrated to Lincoln College, BA 1792). After graduation he joined his father, who had retired to live in Christchurch, Hampshire. Rickman worked as a private tutor and read widely in economics. He edited the Commercial, Agricultural and Manufacturer’s Magazine (until 1801). In 1796 he wrote a private paper in which he argued for the benefits to the nation of a census. George Rose, MP for Christchurch, showed this to the politician Charles Abbot and in March 1801 the latter steered the census bill into law. Rickman was responsible for the first four censuses (1801, 1811, 1821 and 1831) and paved the way for the fifth (1841). In 1801 he became Abbot’s personal secretary whilst the latter was Chief Secretary for Ireland. On Abbot’s election to the post of Speaker of the House of Commons, Rickman became the Speaker’s Secretary. In 1820 he became Clerk Assistant to the Commons with a salary of £2500 per year. He married Susannah Postlethwaite (d. 1836) in 1805. Rickman’s friendship with Southey began at Burton in 1797 and endured for the rest of their lives. Shortly after their first meeting, Southey described him as ‘rough, coarse, well informed on all subjects, believing nothing, jacobinical’. Later in life Rickman became high Tory, anti-Malthusian and anti-semitic. He regularly provided ideas and information (especially statistics) for Southey’s articles in the Quarterly Review and authored the majority of Southey’s April 1818 Quarterly essay on the Poor Laws. Southey and Rickman planned to collaborate on a sequel to the Colloquies (1829) but this was prevented by John Murray’s (1778–1843) financial problems.

Poet. Wordsworth and Southey met in Bristol in 1795. Their relationship became closer after the Southeys moved to Keswick in 1803 and particularly after the death of John Wordsworth in 1805, when Southey provided comfort and managed some of Wordsworth’s business affairs in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. Southey early recognised Wordsworth as one of the great poets but maintained a detached amusement about his unconscious pride and vanity.

Long known to Southey as a Tory critic and editor of The Anti-Jacobin, Gifford became the first editor in 1809 of a new conservative journal begun on Southey’s advice – the Quarterly Review. Gifford then approached Southey through their mutual friend Grosvenor Charles Bedford to be a contributor. Gifford continued as editor until 1824, frequently the target of Southey’s ire over the cuts and interpolations he made to Southey’s contributions. In earlier life a shoemaker, Gifford was the author of two powerful verse satires, The Baviad (1791) and The Mӕviad (1795).

Southey’s sister-in-law. The eldest surviving child of Stephen Fricker and Martha Rowles. Sarah and Southey were childhood friends and it was through her that Southey met Robert Lovell in late 1793. Sarah married Samuel Taylor Coleridge on 4 October 1795. Her relationship with Southey, who provided her with advice and support during her later marital difficulties, was affectionate, and at times jokey and rumbustious. Indeed, Sarah’s daughter and namesake recorded that Southey had been romantically interested in Sarah Fricker first, only later turning his attentions to her sister Edith.

Bristol wine merchant, trading under the name Danvers and White. He was distantly related to the regicides Sir John Danvers (1584/5–1655; DNB) and General Thomas Harrison (c. 1616–60; DNB) and to the diarist Celia Fiennes (1662–1741; DNB). (Southey possessed a manuscript of Fiennes diary which he had been given by the Danvers family and included unacknowledged excerpts from it in his and Coleridge’s Omniana (1812).) Danvers’ father had ‘been a person of some property’, though the family’s fortunes had since declined. Danvers seems to have had two brothers and two sisters. He never married. A Dissenter, he died in London ‘during a short tarriance there’ and was buried in Asplands Burial Ground, Hackney. Danvers knew Southey from childhood. In 1797, their friendship flourished when Southey and his wife lodged in a house in Kingsdown, next door to Danvers and his mother. In 1799, Southey finished the fifteen book version of Madoc in Mrs Danvers’ ‘parlour on her little table’. When Southey went to Portugal in 1800–1, he left a copy of his poetic magnum opus with Danvers and also delegated the task of collecting materials for the third Annual Anthology to him and Davy. This volume did not appear. Danvers visited Southey at Keswick in summer 1805 and kept a journal of his tour, now in the British Library, Add MS 30929. Extracts from this were published in Kenneth Curry, ‘A note on Wordsworth’s “Fidelity”’, Philological Quarterly, 32 (1953), 212–214.

Reviewer and translator. Born in Norwich, the only child of William and Sarah Taylor. Taylor’s interest in German culture culminated in his Historic Survey of German Poetry (1828–1830). He was also a prolific contributor to the Annual Review, The Athenaeum, Monthly Magazine, and Monthly Review. Southey and Taylor met in 1798, whilst the former was on a visit to Great Yarmouth, where his brother Henry Herbert Southey was being tutored by George Burnett. Taylor introduced Southey to his great friend Frank Sayers (1763–1817; DNB) — whose 1792 collection Poems had influenced Southey’s early work — and also to radical and dissenting circles in Norwich. Taylor gave Southey the idea for the Annual Anthology and was an acute, if frequently blunt, critic of his work. From 1803–1804, he edited the Norwich newspaper The Iris, to which Southey contributed poetry. Southey described Taylor as ‘one of the three great men of my acquaintance ... the more I know him and the longer I know him, the more do I admire his knowledge and love his moral character.’

Lawyer and historian who lived at Red Lion square near the British Museum and used the manuscripts thus accessible to him to compile a History of the Anglo-Saxons, 4 vols (1799–1805), on which Southey drew in Madoc (1805). A long term friend and correspondent of Southey, in 1817 Turner gave him legal advice over the Wat Tyler piracy.

Merchant, financier and business agent. A member of a wealthy family, both his father (Joseph) and grandfather were successful merchants in Lisbon. He was educated at Newcome’s Academy, Hackney, where he was taught by George Coleridge, with whom he became lifelong friends. May went to Lisbon in 1793, in order to learn the family trade, returning to England in 1796. May married Susannah Frances Livius in 1799. The marriage produced four children. May and Southey met in Portugal in 1796. Their friendship was to last until the latter’s death. May acted as a financial adviser and agent to Southey, lending him money — including sums to finance Henry Herbert Southey’s education — and purchasing goods on his behalf. Southey reciprocated when May experienced a severe financial crisis in 1821 by lending him his life savings of £620. May visited the Southeys on several occasions and acted as godfather to Southey’s two eldest children — Margaret Edith and Edith May, the latter named in his honour. The Poet’s Pilgrimage to Waterloo (1816) was dedicated to him ‘in testimony of the highest esteem and affection’.

The last, unexpected, child of Robert and Edith Southey, and their only surviving son, he was always known as ‘Cuthbert’ to his family. He was born on 24 February 1819 and was indulged by his parents and older sisters. He was mainly educated at home. In 1836–1837 he accompanied his father on a lengthy trip to the West Country, and, in 1838, was one of the party on Southey’s final foreign journey, to France. Southey raised the money to send him to Queen’s College, Oxford (1837–1841), but Cuthbert did not display the precocious intellectual talent of his elder brother, Herbert. Cuthbert entered the Church and pursued a solid, if unspectacular, career, including terms as Vicar of Ardleigh 1851–1855, Kingsbury Episcopi 1855–1879, St James’s, Dudley 1879–1885 and Askham 1885–1888. He was married three times: to Christina Maclachlan (1819–1851) in 1842; to Henrietta Nunn (b. 1824) in 1853; and to Justina Davies (b. 1841) in 1871. Cuthbert was deeply opposed to Southey’s marriage to Caroline Bowles and edited one of the rival posthumous versions of Southey’s letters, Life and Correspondence (1849–1850). Cuthbert was embarrassed by many of his father’s views, including his religious unorthodoxy, enthusiasm for wine and virulent condemnation of some public figures. All of these aspects of Southey’s life were suppressed or explained away in Cuthbert’s edition.

Printer and schoolfriend of Walter Scott. He printed Southey’s Madoc (1805) and many of his subsequent poems. Ballantyne’s printing business, in which Scott had a secret share, became one of the most highly regarded and profitable of the first decade of the nineteenth century. In 1809 Southey agreed to provide historical material for the Edinburgh Annual Register, issued by the related publishing firm in which Ballantyne, Scott and Ballantyne’s younger brother John were partners. Southey wrote the historical section of the Register between 1810–1813, though as the Register was issued two years in arrears, this covered the period 1808–1811. Southey was persuaded to invest his first year’s salary of £209 in the Register and become a shareholder in the concern. However, the Register was not a financial success and helped draw the Ballantynes’ partnership into increasing difficulties. Southey was not paid for his work on the volume published in 1813 and ceased writing for the Register at the end of that year. He also lost his investment. As a result, Southey became increasingly hostile to Ballantyne, describing him as shifty and incompetent (a ‘sad shuffler’). Although the Register’s failure owed much to its attempt to compete in an already crowded marketplace, Southey himself played a role. His contributions often massively exceeded the length allocated to them, thus delaying the appearance and increasing the cost to the publisher of the periodical. In 1811 Ballantyne’s concern about the impact of this on the Register’s potential sales led him to demand that Southey publish an apology at the front of that year’s issue.

Poet. Eldest child of Charles, a wealthy Quaker banker, and his wife Mary. He matriculated at Caius College, Cambridge in 1798 but did not take his degree. He married Sophia Pemberton in 1799 and they moved to Ambleside in 1800. His works included: contributions to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Poems (1797), Blank Verse (1798) (co-authored with Charles Lamb), the controversial roman-à-clef Edmund Oliver (1798), Nugae Canorae (1819), Desultory Thoughts in London (1821), Poetical Essays on the Character of Pope (1821), and The Duke d’Ormond (1822). Lloyd met Southey at Burton in August 1797, when he and Charles Lamb unexpectedly turned up on Southey’s doorstep. Lloyd remained with Southey and his family for several months. Southey recognised in him a fellow man of strong emotions, a kindred — yet also unlike — spirit, and worried that Lloyd’s ‘feelings ... are not so blunt as we could wish them — or as they should be for his own happiness’. Indeed Lloyd’s continued presence was increasingly unwelcome and in 1798 his tale-telling led to a major quarrel between Southey and Coleridge which was not healed until 1799. After Southey moved to Keswick in 1803, he and his family saw Lloyd, who lived at Low Brathay near Ambleside, regularly. Lloyd’s later life was clouded by mental illness. He was briefly confined in the Quaker-run asylum The Retreat, York, and died in a sanatorium near Versailles. In his edition of Cowper (1836–1837), Southey made his final public observations on Lloyd’s tragic history: ‘[his] intellectual powers were of a very high order ... when in company with persons who were not informed of his condition, no one could descry in him the slightest appearance of a deranged mind.’

Bristolian author, bookseller and publisher. Although Coleridge’s biographer James Dykes Campbell joked ‘I never heard of ... [Cottle’s] having ... any [parents], and think it very doubtful. I should think he was found under a booksellers counter wrapped in Felix Farley’s newspaper’, Joseph was in fact the second child of Robert and Sarah Cottle. He was educated at the school run by Richard Henderson (1736/7–1792) at Hanham, near Bristol. In 1791 he opened a shop as a printseller, stationer, binder and bookseller in Bristol. Cottle abandoned bookselling in 1798 but continued publishing. Between 1791 and 1800, he sold, printed or published 114 works, in congeries with Joseph Johnson, Benjamin Flower, H. D. Symons and others. In 1800 he began to sell his copyrights to the London firm of Longman. A poet and prose writer, his works included: Poems (1795), Malvern Hills (1798; with a prefatory poem by Southey), Alfred (1800), The Fall of Cambria (1808), Early Recollections, Chiefly Relating to the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, During his Long Residence in Bristol (1837) and Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey (1847). Cottle and Southey were introduced by Robert Lovell in 1794. Although not wealthy, Cottle provided generous financial help to Southey throughout the 1790s, even lending him money for his wedding ring. He published Joan of Arc and the majority of Southey’s earliest works, including Poems (1797) and Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal (1797). His professional collaboration with Southey also included contributing poems to the Annual Anthology and co-editing the works of their fellow Bristolian Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770; DNB). What Cottle did not know, was that Southey viewed his poetry with a merriment that verged on contempt. The two men met less frequently after Southey’s move to Keswick in 1803, but maintained their correspondence. Southey’s final tour of the West Country in 1836–1837 included a visit to Cottle in Bristol. After Southey’s death, Cottle was a central figure in the successful campaign to erect a monument to his memory in Bristol cathedral. He recorded his association with Southey for posterity in his controversial Reminiscences (1847), itself a reworking of the equally contentious Early Recollections (1837).

Classical scholar. Son of Alexander Elmsley. He was named after his uncle, the famous London bookseller from whom he inherited a considerable fortune. Educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford (matric. 1791, BA 1794, MA 1797, BD and DD 1823), he was described as ‘the fattest undergraduate of his day’ (DNB). Ordained and presented to the living of Little Horkesley, Essex, on his uncle’s death in 1802 he relinquished his duties and income to a curate, though he continued to hold the living until 1816. He made a brief move to Edinburgh, where he met the founders of the Edinburgh Review, to which he became a contributor. He returned to London and in 1807 moved to Kent, where he lived with his mother until 1816. During this time he produced editions of Aristophanes, Sophocles and Euripides and a number of learned papers on classical subjects, published in the Quarterly Review and other periodicals. He travelled at length in Europe c. 1816–1818 and settled in Oxford in 1818. In 1823 (having been unsuccessfully proposed for the Regius Chair of Divinity at Oxford and having turned down the See of Calcutta) he was elected Camden Professor of Ancient History and Principal of St Alban Hall, Oxford, offices he held until his death in 1825. Southey and Elmsley met at Westminster School and remained lifelong friends, though relatively little of what seems to have been an extensive correspondence survives. Elmsley was also a great friend of Charles Watkin Williams Wynn and the latter erected a memorial tablet to him in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.

Contributor to the Anti-Jacobin, 1797–1798, and parodist there of Southey’s radical ballads. A Pittite in politics, Canning was Foreign Secretary 1807 until 1809, when he lost office after fighting a duel with another minister. In this capacity, he signed a treaty providing for the removal of the Portuguese court to Brazil, and sent British troops to the peninsula, though more tardily and in smaller numbers than Southey wished. The Convention of Cintra and the retreat to Corunna were setbacks in the peninsular war for which he was held partly responsible. Canning was a major influence on the politics of the Quarterly Review, sometimes in ways that Southey disliked, and he suspected Canning of preventing the Quarterly opposing Catholic Emancipation. However, the two men were on relatively friendly terms and Canning visited Southey at Keswick in 1814 before he left to be Ambassador to Portugal, 1814–1816. From 1822 to April 1827 Canning was again Foreign Secretary, and from April to August 1827, Prime Minister.

Fifth child of Robert and Edith Southey. In March 1839 she married her cousin, Herbert Hill, Junior (1810–1892), second son of Herbert and Catherine Hill. They had nine children.

Writer (mainly on botany, art, literature and politics) and draughtsman. Son of William and Susannah Duppa. Educated (late in life) at Trinity College, Oxford (matric. 1807); entered Middle Temple 1810; graduated LLB Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1814. His publications included: A Brief Account of the Subversion of the Papal Government in 1798 (1799); Heads from the Fresco Pictures of Raffaele in the Vatican (1802), reviewed by Southey in the Annual Review (1805); A Selection of Twelve Heads from the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo (1801); Memoirs of a Literary and Political Character (1803); and The Life and Literary Works of Michael Angelo Buonarotti, with His Poetry and Letters (1806). The latter contained translations by Southey and William Wordsworth. Southey and Duppa were introduced by Edmund Seward in Oxford in 1793. Duppa was related to Seward and, according to family lore, distantly related to Southey. Part of Southey’s circle, he was at one time engaged to Mary Page, the cousin of Grosvenor Charles and Horace Walpole Bedford. In the 1790s, Southey sought Duppa’s advice about projected illustrated editions of his poems. Later, Duppa provided the material on Westminster Abbey and on art in Southey’s Letters from England (1807).

Southey’s youngest daughter.

Eldest son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Sarah Fricker; and Southey’s nephew, nicknamed ‘Job’ for his seriousness as a child. Southey played a considerable part in Hartley’s upbringing after his father separated from his mother, leaving his children in Southey’s care at Greta Hall.

Civil servant and miscellaneous writer. The younger brother of Grosvenor Charles Bedford and named after his father’s patron. He was educated at Westminster School (adm. 1784), where his nickname was ‘the Doctor’ or ‘Dr. Johnson’. He did not attend university and later held a post at the British Museum. Like his older brother, he did not marry. Southey’s friendship with Horace began at school and their correspondence (though occasionally intermittent) lasted until at least 1797. Southey’s relationship with Horace was slightly different from that with Grosvenor Charles Bedford. He treated Horace as a younger brother: encouraging him and worrying about his tendency to laziness. He also fostered the younger man’s literary ambitions. Horace’s poems appeared in the Monthly Magazine (1797) and the Annual Anthology (1799).

Scottish clergyman, the founder and tireless advocate of the ‘Madras’ system of schooling. When a chaplain in India, Bell introduced to the Madras Orphan Asylum the ‘monitorial’ system, wherein brighter children were charged with supervising groups of slower children, and all were motivated by a graduated scale of rewards and punishments. Returning to Britain, Bell promoted the system in a series of publications and attempted to have it instituted by a board of education controlled by the Church of England. From 1807 he engaged in a public dispute with the supporters of Joseph Lancaster, who promoted a version of his system outside Church control. Southey, at Bell’s request, supported his system in an 1811 Quarterly Review article and book, The Origin, Nature and Object of the New System of Education (1812). By 1832, Bell’s National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Christian Church was responsible for over 12000 schools in Britain and the empire. Bell continued to badger Southey for public support; after his death Southey, as his literary executor, worked on his biography. Completed by Caroline Bowles and Charles Cuthbert Southey, this was published in 1844 as The Life of the Rev. Andrew Bell.