Southey’s only brother-in-law. Southey was intermittently successful in gaining him employment, at a bank in Bristol in 1800 and on one of Rickman’s statistical projects in 1804. Though Southey respected George’s good qualities, he was frustrated by his ‘uncommon dullness’, and bemused by his Methodist enthusiasm. He died at Greta Hall after a long illness.

The educationalist whose monitorial system of teaching mirrored that of Southey’s friend Andrew Bell. Although a Quaker, and opposed to corporal punishment, Lancaster’s disciplinary methods, involving public humiliation and confinement, lost him Southey’s approval. Bell relentlessly promoted his own Anglican educational system over Lancaster’s, and Lancaster found greater success in the United States, Mexico and South America.

Campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade, and a friend of the Wordsworths, Coleridge and Southey. He moved to the Lake District in 1794 and lived in retirement at Eusemere, near Pooley Bridge, Ullswater, until 1806. Clarkson and his wife returned to her native Suffolk in 1806, and remained there until his death. He returned to the campaign against the slave trade in 1804 and wrote ceaselessly in the cause until the passing of the 1833 Act abolishing slavery in the British empire. He also wrote admiringly of the Quakers.

A radical politician involved in the election of 1807 for the Westminster constituency. Burdett fought a duel with his fellow radical candidate James Paull (1770–1808; DNB), whose independence of party Southey applauded. Southey initially admired Burdett but became increasingly critical of him as he became more suspicious of popular radicalism.

Publisher and bookseller. He was born at Geli-gron, Wales, eldest brother of Thomas Rees, Unitarian minister and writer on theological history. Owen Rees migrated to Bristol where he became a bookseller. He later moved to London and in 1797 was taken into partnership by the publisher Thomas Norton Longman. From 1799 Longman and Rees became Southey’s main publishers. Rees retired from the business in early 1837.

Tanner and farmer of Nether Stowey in Somerset. He met Southey and Coleridge during their walking tour of 1794 and became a friend of both and a crucial financial support to Coleridge. Poole helped untangle the financial difficulties left by Coleridge’s failed periodical, The Watchman, found a house at Nether Stowey for Coleridge’s family in 1797 and provided much financial assistance for them while Coleridge was in Germany in 1798–1799. Poole was the central figure in reconciling Coleridge and Southey in August 1799. Later, he assisted Rickman in compiling a report on the state of the poor. Southey last met Poole on his tour of the West Country in 1837.

Daughter of Southey’s old Lisbon acquaintance, Richard Sealy (c. 1752–1821). She married Henry Herbert Southey in 1809.

Southey’s cousin, probably the daughter of his mother’s brother Joseph Hill.

Housekeeper at Greta Hall, daughter of a Keswick midwife. Beloved of the Southey and Coleridge families; ‘Wilsy’ left money in her will to the Southey and Coleridge children.

English sugar merchant, whom Southey met in Portugal during his visit of 1800–1801 and again in Liverpool in 1804. Koster lodged in Keswick in 1815–1816 after suffering heavy financial losses and later relocated to France, where he died at Bordeaux. Koster’s home in Lisbon was a meeting place for those interested in the arts and sciences and he was a man of wide interests, a member of the Portuguese Royal Academy of Sciences and a writer on economic matters, including A Statement of the Trade in Gold Bullion (1811). His son, Henry Koster, was also a friend of Southey’s.

Neighbour and friend. Biddlecombe met Southey in summer 1797 when the latter moved to the village of Burton in Hampshire. Southey described him as ‘rich enough to buy books, and very friendly, all that a neighbour should be’. Biddlecombe married in 1798, but his wife died in childbirth in March 1799, leaving him with an infant daughter. During Southey’s numerous absences, Biddlecombe appears to have looked after the cottage at Burton and when it was finally given up in 1802 arranged for a sale of part of the furniture and stored some of Southey’s possessions, including books, for a number of years. During his 1817 visit to France, Southey ran into Biddlecombe, whom he had not seen for several years, and his invalid daughter, describing the latter as ‘short and plethoric, with a countenance of prepossessing good nature’.

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.

Son of a wealthy merchant in Hull; MP for Hull 1780–84, Yorkshire 1784–1812 and Bramber 1812–25. Wilberforce underwent a conversion to evangelical Christianity in the mid-1780s and became one of the country’s leading campaigners against the slave trade. Southey admired Wilberforce’s stance and the two started to correspond in 1813 over the need to promote Christian missionary activity in India.

Civil engineer and architect. The son of a shepherd from Eskdale, Dumfriesshire, he was apprenticed to a stonemason at the age of fourteen and taught himself how to design and manage building projects. Telford made his name as Surveyor of Public Works in Shropshire, where he built the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct over the River Dee (1805). His largest project, which he co-ordinated from 1803 onwards, was a plan to improve communications in the Highlands of Scotland, including the Caledonian Canal, 920 miles of new roads, over 1,000 new bridges and many harbour improvements. He also designed the Menai Suspension Bridge (1819–1826). Southey inspected the Caledonian Canal and other Highland improvements with Telford and Rickman in 1819 and greatly admired Telford’s work – he wrote three ‘Inscriptions’ for the Caledonian Canal and praised Telford in his New Year’s Ode for 1823. Telford left Southey a legacy in his Will and asked him to write his biography. Southey did not fulfill this commission, possibly because of his own failing health.

Wife of Colonel and later Lieutenant-General William Peachy, from a family resident in Bishops Lydeard, Somerset, where she continued to spend winters after her marriage, Southey visiting on at least one occasion. In summer, Peachy was fond of rowing her boat on Derwentwater, near her home on Derwent Isle. Southey wrote an epitaph for her when she died, recalling her gliding across the lake in her skiff. Through Peachy, Southey was introduced to her uncle Sir Charles Malet (1752–1815) and his family.

Author and publisher, initially in Leicester and from 1795 in London. In 1796 he founded the progressive Monthly Magazine, employing firstly John Aikin and from 1806 George Gregory as its editor. A radical and republican, Phillips himself wrote anti-government articles for the periodical under the signature ‘Common Sense’. Phillips’s business prospered in the first decade of the nineteenth century. In 1807 he was elected a sheriff of London and in 1808 he was knighted. His fortunes declined in the 1810s and he retired to Brighton in 1823, dying there in 1840. Southey contributed poems and letters to the Monthly Magazine from 1796 and thus had a professional relationship with Phillips. However, he did not have a high opinion of him. In 1812 he cautioned that the publisher was ‘one of the most accomplished rogues in his majestys dominions’. Southey also shared Coleridge’s view of Phillips’s vegetarianism: ‘whatever might be thought of innate Ideas, there could be no doubt to a man who had seen Phillips of the existence of innate Beef.’

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.’

Poet and translator. Elder brother of Joseph Cottle. Educated at the school run by Richard Henderson (1736/7–1792) at Hanham, near Bristol, and Magdalene College, Cambridge (matric. 1795, BA 1799). He then embarked on a legal training. He spent the final year of his life in London, where he was a friend of George Dyer and Charles Lamb, and died in his chambers at Clifford’s Inn. Author of Icelandic Poetry, or, The Edda of Saemund, Translated into English verse (1797; published by Joseph Cottle and with a dedicatory poem by Southey). Several of his other poems were collected posthumously in the fourth edition of Joseph Cottle, Malvern Hills, With Minor Poems and Essays (1829). Southey probably met Amos Cottle through his younger brother Joseph. The two shared an interest in Scandinavian literature and mythology and it was Southey who encouraged Amos to produce a verse, rather than prose, translation of the Edda and who reviewed it in the Critical Review.

Second son of Herbert and Catherine Hill. He married his cousin, Southey’s daughter Bertha, in 1839 and spent most of his life as a schoolmaster. He was Master of King’s School, Warwick, 1842–1876.

The son of Mary and Robert Lovell, his father’s early death left him with few prospects (significantly less than those of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s children, whose paternal relations were capable of greater generosity). In 1803 the money paid by the Lovell family for his education ceased. Southey and John May tried to get Robert Lovell Junior into Christ’s Hospital. They failed. The boy was apprenticed to a London printer and effectively separated from his mother, who lived with the Southeys in Keswick. The impact of this on his character seems to have been profound. In 1836 his first cousin Sara Coleridge described his lack of social skills: ‘From nine years old he has had to shift and scramble a good deal for himself, to bear up against a hard world which would have crushed <or injured> the frame it did not render to a certain degree tough & unyielding ... [he] never had the opportunity of acquiring a taste for domestic, scarcely even for social enjoyment: we ought not to wonder that he is deficient in many qualities which can only be fostered thereby.’ Robert Lovell Junior predeceased his mother. He disappeared whilst on a European walking tour in 1836.

The children of Robert Cottle, an unsuccessful Bristol tailor and draper. The family included Amos, Joseph and Robert (?1780–1858), a painter and founder of his own religious sect (‘the Cottlelites’), and five sisters, Elizabeth (c. 1764–1789), Mary (?1772–1839), Ann (?1780–1855), Sarah (d. 1834) and Martha (c. 1785–1800). Southey seems to have been acquainted with the entire Cottle family. After their secret marriage in November 1795, his wife Edith lived with the Cottle sisters for some of the time Southey was absent in Spain and Portugal.

Iron merchant and manufacturer in Greenwich, where he was a partner in the Crowley works and an important supplier to the Royal Navy. Vardon met Southey on his tour of the Netherlands in 1815. They had a mutual friend in John William Knox (1784–1862) and Vardon also knew the family of the wife of Southey’s old Westminster friend, Charles Collins.

Politician. The eldest son of Thomas Phillipps Lamb and his wife Elizabeth Davis. Educated at Westminster (adm. 1788); Edinburgh University (1792) and Christ Church, Oxford (matric. Dec 1793). Lamb’s family were wealthy, politically influential and well-connected. His father was the government manager at Rye, Sussex. Lamb’s career benefited from the patronage of Lord Liverpool (1727–1808; DNB) and his eldest son, Lord Hawkesbury, a future Prime Minister. Lamb was private secretary to Hawkesbury, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1801–1802, and in 1802 was offered but rejected the consulship at Lisbon, a post worth between £2000–2500 per year. He sat as an MP for Rye from 1802–1806, though he seems never to have spoken in the House of Commons. He vacated his seat when appointed to the post of Law Clerk at the Home Office by the Ministry of ‘Talents’. Following in the footsteps of his grandfather and father, he was Mayor of Rye from 1803–1804, 1809–1810 and 1816–1817. He never married. Southey described Lamb as ‘one of my oldest — & once one of my most intimate friends’. The two met whilst pupils at Westminster and Southey stayed with Lamb’s family in Rye on more than one occasion. They drifted apart (though, Southey later noted, ‘without dissention’) during Southey’s time at Oxford. Lamb seems to have made an effort to renew their acquaintance, seeking Southey out in London in 1802. In later years, however, Southey’s opinion of him soured. He described him as one who had ‘discarded decency’ and on reading of Lamb’s death in a newspaper admitted that he had: ‘ ... thought more of him, poor fellow, in consequence, than I had done for the last four-and-twenty years ... [He] had become a mere idle heir of fortune, and not having his estates to manage while his father lived, had not even that occupation to keep him from frivolities. He was an old man at thirty, and that too being of a family in which it is degeneracy to die at an age short of fourscore.’

Surgeon and journalist. Educated at Christ’s Hospital (where he was a contemporary of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb) and University College, Oxford (BA 1796, MA 1803, MB and MD 1803). He first met Southey, who was flirting with a career in medicine, at the Anatomy School in Oxford in early 1794. They became firm friends, Southey later describing how in 1794 Allen had been his ‘bosom-companion’ and had ‘rendered many hours delightful which would otherwise have passed in the destructive daydreams of solitude’. Allen wrote poetry and, in Oxford in June 1794, introduced Southey to Coleridge. In 1794–1795, Allen was possibly a convert to Pantisocracy. In 1796, he enrolled at the Westminster Hospital and married a wealthy widow, Catherine, daughter of Nathaniel Forster (1726–1790; DNB). She died within a year. In 1797, with the encouragement of Anthony Carlisle, he became deputy surgeon with England’s Second Royals, then stationed in Portugal. He was back in Britain by 1802 and from 1803 until his death worked as a journalist, writing for (according to Charles Lamb) the London newspapers the Oracle, True Briton, Star and Traveller.