Born in Penzance, son of Robert Davy, a woodcarver. Educated at Penzance and Truro grammar schools and apprenticed to an apothecary-surgeon in Truro. Davy had wide interests as a young man, writing poetry as well as conducting chemical experiments on the nature of heat, light and acidity. In October 1798 he went to Bristol to work for Thomas Beddoes at his Pneumatic Institution, which opened in March 1799. Davy soon became friendly with Southey and Coleridge, and they both participated in his experiments with nitrous oxide, or ‘laughing gas’. Southey published some of Davy’s early poems in the Annual Anthology (1799) and (1800) and suggested Davy should write a poem on Mango Capac, the first Inca, after Southey had failed in his plan to identify Madoc with the Inca ruler. In January 1801 Davy moved to London, and Southey saw much less of him. Davy worked at the Royal Institution, where he became a Professor in 1802. In 1807 he made a series of experiments there, using the Voltaic pile to isolate previously unknown elements including potassium and sodium. This work was regarded as a brilliant contribution to Britain’s scientific reputation; Southey, while recognising Davy’s genius, thought that he became vain and over-assiduous to win the approval of polite society. Davy was elected President of the Royal Society in 1820.

Bristol-based surgeon, painter and linguist, originally from Berne, Switzerland. He came to England in the 1790s and studied medicine under John Abernethy (1764–1831; DNB) at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, before settling at Clifton in Bristol. He married Emmeline Edgeworth, a sister of the novelist Maria (1768–1849; DNB). Southey came to know King well when he succeeded Davy in his role at the Pneumatic Institution in 1801. Southey saw much less of King after he moved to Keswick in 1803, but he continued to speak warmly of his personal qualities and medical skill.

Senhouse, whose acquaintance Southey made in 1807, was a landed gentleman from a family enriched by the exploitation of coal and iron from their estate along the Cumbrian coast, and by their development of Maryport as a commercial harbour from which these minerals were exported. Senhouse made his excellent library available to Southey; there was much family visiting over the years in both Netherhall and Greta Hall. Senhouse accompanied Southey on his tours in Europe in 1817 and 1838.

Writer and poet (in English and Latin) whose 1798 Gebir, Southey declared, contained ‘some of the most exquisite poetry in the language’. Landor inherited wealth in 1805 and in 1808 met Southey at Bristol, offering to pay for the publication of future poems that Southey might write. Thus encouraged, Southey completed The Curse of Kehama (1810), sending drafts to Landor, and Roderick the Last of the Goths (1814). In 1812 Landor himself published a blank verse tragedy on Spain, Count Julian, with Southey’s help. In 1808 Landor went to Spain to fight with the Spanish against their French occupiers. Upon landing at Corunna, he ‘immediately gave the governor ten thousand reals for the relief of Venturada, which had been sacked by the French’. He engaged in some minor action at Bilbao and ‘had the satisfaction of serving three launches with powder and muskets, and of carrying on my shoulders six or seven miles a child too heavy for its exhausted mother’ (quoted by Malcolm Elwin, Savage Landor (London, 1941), pp. 101–102). Thoroughly disgusted by the Convention of Cintra, and believing that he had been insulted by Charles Stuart, Baron Stuart de Rothesay (1779–1845; DNB), British envoy to the Spanish juntas in French-occupied Spain, he returned to England and from 1809, he lived at Llanthony Abbey in Wales, where Southey visited him in 1811. Landor left England to live in France and Italy in 1814. He received Southey’s advice on his Imaginary Conversations (1824–46), visited Southey in Keswick in 1832, returned to England in 1836 and met Southey for the last time in Bristol in 1837. In 1843 Landor published a tribute after Southey’s death in The Examiner; he also sought advancement for Charles Cuthbert, Southey’s son, in the church. Admired by Dickens, Browning, Swinburne and Trollope, Landor spent his final years in Italy and died in Florence.

Started his life in office in 1798 as a junior, but well-connected, civil servant at the Treasury. He played an important part in the British war effort as Commissary-in-Chief 1811–1816, and later moved into politics as Financial Secretary to the Treasury 1823–1827, and Chancellor of the Exchequer 1827–1828. Southey knew him through Grosvenor Bedford and Herries proved helpful with franking Southey’s correspondence.

Fourth and youngest child of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Sarah Fricker; and Southey’s niece. Translator, writer and indefatigable editor of her father’s works. Educated, in part, by Southey, her first book, a translation of Martin Dobrizhoffer’s History of the Abipones (1822), was a project that he found for her. In 1829 she married her first cousin, Henry Nelson Coleridge.

Daughter of Robert and Mary Harding, of Broxbourne, Hertfordshire and wife of William Gonne, whom she married in 1790. She was the godmother of Edith May Southey and the mother of Henry Herbert Southey’s second wife, Louisa Gonne. Southey greatly admired her.

Son of the Lisbon merchant, John Theodore Koster. At the age of only sixteen his father sent him to Brazil, both for his health and to set up as a sugar planter. Koster travelled extensively in Pernambuco and returned to England only briefly in 1811 and again in 1815. On the latter occasion, his visit to Southey in Keswick turned into a prolonged stay after Koster was injured in a coach accident. Koster had already aided Southey’s History of Brazil (1810–1819) by locating manuscript material in Pernambuco; in 1815 he helped Southey decipher Portuguese texts and set about translating the first volume of the History of Brazil into Portuguese. He also accompanied Southey on his visit to the Low Countries in the autumn of 1815. Southey encouraged Koster to publish his journal of his time in Brazil as Travels in Brazil (1816), a widely admired book that is still an important source for the social history of North East Brazil. Koster returned to Pernambuco in 1816 and died there in 1820.

Whig politician and Hispanophile; nephew of the Whig politician Charles James Fox. Lord Holland gave Southey access to his superb library of books and manuscripts relating to Spain, Portugal and their colonies. Southey used it to research his History of Brazil (1810–1819).

Younger brother and at one time the business partner of Southey’s father, Robert Southey Senior. He was the beneficiary of the will of John Southey, to Southey’s envy and dismay, thus becoming a rich man. He spent his later years in Taunton, Somerset. Although unmarried, childless, and wealthy Thomas Southey was on distant terms with his brother Robert’s sons. Thomas Southey’s Will held no surprises — it cut his nephews off without a penny, ‘his last boast being ... that no one of his own name should ever be a shilling the better for him’.

Chancellor of the Exchequer 1807–1812, and Prime Minister 1809–1812. Southey admired Perceval’s opposition to Catholic Emancipation and Perceval was reported to be impressed by Southey’s attacks on Methodism. Perceval’s assassination in 1812 deeply shocked Southey, as it seemed to reveal popular sympathy with Perceval’s killer and to weaken the government’s hostility to Catholic Emancipation.

Art patron, landscape painter, and coal mine owner. He was a friend and patron of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Constable and Scott, inviting them to his estate at Coleorton, Leicestershire. Sir George was an enthusiastic amateur painter and owner of many Italian landscapes. Southey first met Beaumont in the Lakes in 1803 and corresponded with him and his wife.

Naval officer and writer, second son of the music historian Dr Charles Burney (1726–1814; DNB) and brother of Charles (1757–1817; DNB) and Frances (Fanny; 1752–1840; DNB). He was nicknamed the ‘Capitaneus’ by Southey. He was sent to sea at the age of 10. In 1772 he sailed in the Resolution on James Cook’s (1728–1779; DNB) second voyage to the South Seas and on his return home in 1774 acted as an interpreter for Omai, the first Tahitean to visit Britain. Burney sailed on Cook’s third voyage and witnessed the latter’s death in 1779. He rose to the rank of Captain, but a reputation for insubordination brought his active naval career to an end in 1784. In the 1790s, Burney embarked on a second career as a writer, publishing an edition of William Bligh’s (1754–1817; DNB) A Voyage to the South Sea in HMS Bounty (1792). His magnum opus was A Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean (1803–1817). Burney separated from his wife, setting up house between 1798 to 1803 with his half-sister Sarah Burney (1772–1844) in a relationship that was rumoured to be incestuous. He returned to his wife in 1803, where Southey subsequently visited him at his home in James Street, Westminster. Southey and Burney’s shared interest in the South Seas and voyages of exploration led to a long-standing exchange of information and books.

A surgeon and apothecary in Keswick, who treated the Southey family.

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.

Book-collector. Son of Reginald Heber, clergyman and landowner. Educated at Brasenose College, Oxford (BA 1796, MA, 1797). Heber edited some minor classical writers, but his main interest was his book collection, which finally totalled over 100,000 volumes housed in eight different locations. Though he concentrated on early English poetry and drama his library included classical works and a wide selection of European and Latin American literature. Heber was exceptionally generous in lending his books, and let Southey use his copy of Amadis of Gaul. Heber was MP for Oxford University 1821–1825, but resigned and spent several years on the continent after rumours of a homosexual relationship began to circulate. However, he was never prosecuted and eventually returned to England.

Eldest son of Herbert and Catherine Hill. Southey greatly liked him and invited him to spend the summer at Greta Hall in 1830. He became a clergyman and was Rector of Sheering, Essex, 1849–1899.

A hero of Southey’s in the 1790s as the great radical Whig leader and ‘Friend of the People’ who opposed the anti-reform policies of William Pitt’s (1759–1806; DNB) government. Fox was an admirer of pastoral poetry and for this reason Southey sent him a presentation copy of Madoc (Wordsworth had done likewise with Lyrical Ballads). In semi-retirement from politics from 1797–1806, Fox became Foreign Minister in the government headed by Wynn’s uncle, William Wyndham, Baron Grenville, in 1806, dying the same year having seen the bill for the abolition of the slave trade, for which he had long campaigned, pass parliament.

Chemist and physician. Born at Shifnal, Shropshire, son of Richard Beddoes and Ann Whitehall. Educated at Bridgnorth Grammar School, by private tutor, and at Pembroke College, Oxford (matric. 1776, BA 1779, MB and MD 1786), and Edinburgh. Reader in Chemistry at Oxford from 1788. In the early 1790s, a growing reputation as a radical led to his surveillance by Home Office spies and failure to gain the Regius Chair in Chemistry. He left Oxford for Bristol in 1793 and married Anna Edgeworth, sister of the novelist Maria (1768–1849; DNB), in the following year. Beddoes was involved in the political protest movements of the mid-1790s and possibly first met Southey in 1795, during the latter’s immersion in Bristol politics. In 1799, Beddoes opened the Pneumatic Institute (from 1802 the Preventive Medical Institution for the Sick and Drooping Poor) in Hotwells, Bristol. Southey participated in the experiments with gases carried out by Beddoes and Humphry Davy, and recorded in Notice of Some Observations Made at the Medical Pneumatic Institution (1799). Beddoes was a prolific writer on medical, political and educational reform. He was also a poet: author of Alexander’s Expedition (1792) and a contributor to Southey’s Annual Anthology (1799). Southey respected Beddoes’s medical judgment, consulting him on more than one occasion. In 1809 he recorded that ‘From Beddoes I hoped for more good to the human race than from any other individual’. However, disagreements about poetry ensured that their personal relationship was not warm. Southey dismissed Beddoes as a ‘hypercritic of the Darwin school’ and was furious when his ‘Domiciliary Verses’ (a parody of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth and Southey) found its way into the first volume of the Annual Anthology. Joseph Cottle, who was responsible for the poem’s inclusion, was ordered by Southey not to solicit any further contributions from Beddoes.

Physician, author and brother of Anna Letitia Barbauld. In the mid-1790s, Southey and Aikin moved in the same circles in London. Aikin was a regular contributor to periodicals and his review of Joan of Arc appeared in the Analytical Review in 1796. In 1797 Aikin and his son, Arthur Aikin, translated the first volume of Necker’s On the French Revolution. Southey translated the second. In the mid-1790s, Southey (using a variety of pseudonyms) corresponded with Aikin in the latter’s capacity as editor of the Monthly Magazine. In 1807 Southey contributed articles to the new periodical Aikin edited: The Athenæum: a Magazine of Literary and Miscellaneous Information. Southey also contributed to Aikin’s General Biography (1799–1813).

Southey’s third daughter.

Governor-General of Bengal, who returned to England in early 1806. Wellesley’s governorship was marked by a drive to acquire more territory in India. On his return, political controversy soon erupted: James Paull (1770–1808; DNB), Indian trader (1790–1805), accused Wellesley of ruining his trade in Lucknow (Bengal) and undermining the nawab of Oudh’s authority there during the years 1801–1802. This challenge kept Wellesley out of political office until 1809. In that year Wellesley was appointed Ambassador to Spain, and he arrived in Seville in August 1809 to negotiate with the embattled Supreme Central Junta. Here, he found himself once again in the same theatre of military and diplomatic activity as his brother Sir Arthur Wellesley (Duke of Wellington), his main aim being to support his brother’s army in the Peninsula. The Junta’s unwillingness to organise supplies for the British Army while urging a policy of attack led Wellesley (and Southey) to suspect some of the Junta of co-operating with the French. Southey was suspicious of Wellesley’s role in the Cabinet as Foreign Secretary 1809–1812, because he knew Wellesley favoured Catholic Emancipation. Nevertheless, he had some hopes that Wellesley’s appointment as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1821–1828 might lead to stern measures to suppress rural disorders.

Politician. He was the son of Samuel Smith (1728–1798), a wealthy wholesale grocer and Dissenter. William Smith’s business activities were not successful, but his family’s money subsidized his lengthy political career – he was MP for Sudbury 1784–1790 and 1796–1802, Camelford 1791– 1796 and Norwich 1802–1806, 1807–1830. Smith was a long-standing supporter of parliamentary reform, religious equality and the abolition of the slave trade. He was also an early supporter of the French Revolution, an enthusiastic Whig from the early 1790s and a convert to Unitarianism. These views condemned him to the backbenches and he never held office. He was, though, a regular contributor to debates on a wide range of subjects. Some MPs found his contributions rather too regular, though, and his sententious style did not always command the House of Commons’ respect. When he denounced Southey in a debate on the 14 March 1817 for changing his views on political reform, Southey defended himself with A Letter to William Smith, Esq., M.P. (1817) and Smith decided not to prolong the exchange. His voice continued to be heard regularly in the Commons, though.

Was at school with Wordsworth at Hawkshead, where he later became schoolmaster. On the death of his father, Calvert became a man of independent means, inheriting, alongside other property, the estate of Bowness on the east shore of Bassenthwaite, near Keswick. He was a member of Southey’s Lake District circle. His younger brother Raisley (1773–1795) left Wordsworth a legacy of £900.