Daughter of the London merchant George Tarbutt. In 1797 she married Thomas Vardon. They had at least three children, including Thomas Vardon (1799–1867; DNB), Librarian of the House of Commons. Her sister, Caroline Forsyth Tarbutt, married Southey’s old Oxford friend George Maule (d. 1851) in 1810.

Barrister. Second son of John Losh. Born at Woodside, Carlisle, he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge (BA 1786) and Lincoln’s Inn (called to the Bar 1789). He visited Paris in 1792 and on his return to England moved in a circle of metropolitan and Cambridge-based radicals and reformers that included George Dyer, William Godwin, John Horne Tooke (1736–1812; DNB), John Tweddell (1769–1799; DNB), Felix Vaughan (dates unknown), and William Wordsworth. In 1795–1796, ill-health forced his relocation to Bath, where he moved in the same circles as Southey. Losh was amongst the earliest readers of the manuscript of the first complete version of Madoc and had literary ambitions of his own, publishing an edition of Milton’s Areopagitica (1791) and a translation of Benjamin Constant’s Observations on the Strength of the Present Government in France (1797). He married Cecilia Baldwin in February 1798 and moved permanently to Newcastle at the end of the same year. In later life he was a successful lawyer, businessman and local politician.

Daughter of a Birmingham manufacturer, she married Charles Lloyd on 24 April 1799. They moved to Old Brathay, near Ambleside, in 1800. They had nine children and a notably happy family life, despite Charles Lloyd’s bouts of mental instability. Thomas De Quincey claimed that ‘as a wife and mother’ Sophia was ‘unsurpassed’.

Wealthy woollen merchant, who was Mayor of Leeds in 1791 and 1804, Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant for Yorkshire. He retired to Ludlow in 1807 and Southey came to know him in 1808 when Browne and his family spent one of several summers in the Lakes. The two continued to correspond until Browne’s death.

Unitarian minister, at Lewin’s Mead Chapel, Bristol, and school master. Educated at the Warrington Academy, he moved to Bristol in 1771. Married Mary Coates (1753–1783) and, after her death, Susanna Bishop (d. 1842). He was on good terms with a number of writers, including Southey (whom he had taught briefly when he took over Mr Foot’s school, Bristol), Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Anna Letitia Barbauld. His publications included The Nature and Causes of Atheism (1797).

Writer and painter of miniatures. Her poetry was admired by Coleridge, who penned the complimentary ‘To Matilda Betham, from a Stranger’. Betham published Elegies (1797) and Poems (1808); Southey advised her about her poetry and sat to her for his portrait in 1808, as Coleridge also did. In 1809 Betham visited Greta Hall and painted Southey’s wife and children. Owing to the unconventionality of her conduct Betham’s family confined her in an asylum in 1819. Meeting her the following year, Southey declared her ‘perfectly sane in her conversation and manner, tho she has written me the maddest letters I ever saw’.

Musician and composer. He held the post of Master of the King’s Music from 1786 until his death. As Poet Laureate, Southey sent him his New Year’s Odes to set to music. The music composed by Parsons for Southey’s Odes was not performed and has not survived.

Younger brother of Henry Kirke and (John) Neville White. He attended Pembroke College, Cambridge, graduating in 1815; Southey sent him some encouraging letters when White was disappointed by his academic performance. White never married and became a clergyman. Initially, he held difficult curacies in industrial parishes in West Bromwich and then St George’s, Manchester (1826–42) – Southey helped him acquire the latter post. However, he finally benefited from the connections his brother, Neville White, had made in Norfolk, especially that with Benjamin Cubitt (1769–1852), a wealthy clergyman and landowner. Cubitt was a relative of Neville White’s wife, Charlotte Sewell, and married in 1827, as his second wife, Neville and James’s middle sister, Frances Moriah White (1791–1854). To consolidate the Whites’ connections with the Cubitts even further, in 1835 Catherine Bailey White (1794–1889), the youngest sister of Neville and James, married Thomas Mack (1794–1858), Benjamin Cubitt’s nephew and another Norfolk clergyman and landowner (Curate 1822–37, Vicar 1837–58 of Tunstead). Cubitt, as patron of the living, appointed James White to be Vicar of Stalham in Norfolk (1843–52). Following Cubitt’s death, White succeeded him as Rector of Sloley (1852–85), and was followed by one of Neville White’s sons, Joseph Neville White (1825–1901) as Vicar of Stalham (1852–1901). James White also inherited the estate at Sloley after the death of his sister, Frances. White officiated at the marriage of Southey’s daughter, Edith May, and John Warter, at Keswick in 1834.

Third child and second son of Edward Roberts. A delicate child, he showed a precocious interest in antiquities and amassed a coin collection that was said to be worth 4,000 guineas. He was a student at Christ Church, Oxford, 1805–1808, and contributed to the Gentlemans Magazine and Quarterly Review, especially on numismatics. After his early death, Grosvenor Bedford, who was his cousin, compiled a Memoir (1814), which was, unsurprisingly, favourably reviewed by Southey in the Quarterly Review. Southey also wrote a poem in memory of Roberts.

The ‘swan of Lichfield’– a poet, encouraged in youth by Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802; DNB). Her writings included Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional (1760), Elegy on Captain Cook (1780), Monody on Major Andre (1781) and Louisa: A Poetic Novel (1784). Walter Scott edited her Poetical Works for Ballantyne in 1810; her voluminous correspondence was published in 1811. Seward was quick to recognise Southey as a poet to be watched: her 1797 ‘Philippic on a Modern Epic’ condemned the ‘Baneful’ politics of his Joan of Arc, but simultaneously heralded it as the work of ‘sun-born Genius’. She continued to follow Southey’s career with some interest. In 1802 she wrote to the Poetical Register, lauding him as a ‘genuine Poet’, though cautioning the reader against adopting ‘his capricious systems’. She read Madoc shortly after its 1805 publication and published a lengthy defence of it in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1808. When Southey got wind (via a letter sent by Seward to Charles Lloyd) of her high opinion, he wrote to her. This initiated a correspondence that lasted until Seward’s death and that led to their one meeting in Lichfield in summer 1808. Late in life, Southey provided a comic account of the ‘jubilant but appalling solemnity’ of this encounter. However, his attitude to Seward was more ambivalent than this suggests. He was keenly aware of – and attentive to – her place in literary history, noting that she ‘was not so much over-rated at one time, as she has been since unduly depreciated’ (Poetical Works, 10 vols (London, 1837–1838), V, pp. xv–xviii).

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’.

Soldier. Educated at Westminster School, where he was a friend of Southey’s, and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1789, Bunbury presented Southey with a copy of Thomas Warton’s Poems (3rd edn, 1779). Their friendship did not last. In 1793, Bunbury tried to avoid Southey when the latter was visiting Cambridge. Southey, in turn, claimed that Bunbury’s ‘debauchery’ was the direct result of his public school education. Bunbury joined the army and died at the Cape of Good Hope. Bunbury’s father, the artist Henry William Bunbury, and his younger brother, Sir Henry Edward Bunbury, later became close friends of Southey’s and members of his circle in Keswick.

Clergyman and schoolmaster. The elder brother of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Southey and George Coleridge were — especially later in life, when the latter acknowledged Southey’s services to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s family — on terms of mutual respect.

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

Clergyman, historian and travel writer. His successful clerical career culminated in his appointment as Archdeacon of Wiltshire 1804–1828, but he devoted most of his time to historical writings, including History of the House of Austria (1807) and Memoirs of the Bourbon Kings of Spain (1813). Coxe concentrated on diplomatic exchanges and high politics, leading Southey to view his books as very dull, if worthy. The two corresponded briefly about European history.

A family of Bristol-based Quakers and pin manufacturers. Robert Lovell (1746–1804) and his first wife Edith Bourne (1745–1782) had two sons, Joseph and Robert (Southey’s brother-in-law), and five daughters. Lovell’s second marriage to Lydia Hill (1754–1816) produced five more children. Southey was on reasonable terms with all the Lovells, but their relationship was clouded by struggles over adequate financial provision for the son and widow of Robert Lovell.

A daughter of Wade Browne by his first wife. In 1823 she married Charles Collins Crump (c. 1790–1876), Rector of Halford, Warwickshire from 1826. Southey visited the Browne family home in Ludlow when she was a young woman and later corresponded with her.

The eldest child of David Jardine (1766–1797), Minister of the Trim Street Unitarian Chapel, Bath. Jardine was an undergraduate at the University of Glasgow and Southey helped his education by lending him books. He later pursued a career in the law, becoming a magistrate and a legal historian.

The friend of almost every literary man of his day, first met Southey at a dinner at Dr Aikin’s in March 1808. Robinson had gone to Spain in 1808 as a special war correspondent of The Times, and through the connections he made at that time he was able to help Southey find materials he needed for the Edinburgh Annual Register.

The second wife of Wade Browne, by whom she had one daughter, Mary (dates unknown).

Army officer. In summer 1808, as commander of the British forces in Portugal, he was responsible for agreeing to the highly controversial Convention of Cintra, by which the French army, its arms and spoils were repatriated in British ships. Dalrymple was recalled to England shortly afterwards and appeared before a government-appointed board of inquiry, which determined that he be exonerated of all blame. Although he was subsequently promoted, reaching the rank of General in 1812, he never received another command. He wrote a memoir of the Peninsular War in 1818, but it remained unpublished until 1830. He also wrote to Southey in 1816 in reply to the latter's criticisms of the Convention of Cintra in the Quarterly Review and sent Southey information for his History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832).

Country gentleman and JP, of Unitarian and liberal views and literary and scientific interests. He was born in Cirencester, and later owned estates at Bownham House, near Minchinhampton, Gloucestshire and at Easton Grey, near Malmesbury, Wiltshire. He trained as a barrister but a speech impediment meant that he never practiced. He was known as the ‘Macenas of his neighbourhood’ for his patronage of men of letters and his philanthropy. He had a wide circle of friends in public life, including the economist David Ricardo (1772–1823; DNB) and John Whishaw (c. 1764–1840), ‘the Pope of Holland House’. Smith was married to Elizabeth Chandler, a fellow Unitarian. She was a noted collector of autographs and books. They had at least one child, a daughter, who was painted by James Northcote (1746–1831; DNB) in 1803. Southey was on very good terms with the Smiths, whom he probably knew through Charles Danvers. Southey visited them at Bownham in 1803, where he made use of their extensive library. He also sought out new items for Elizabeth Smith’s autograph collection. These included a MS of Coleridge’s then unpublished ‘Kubla Khan’, now British Library Add MS 50847, sent by Southey in February 1804. In turn, Thomas Smith subscribed to the Southey-Cottle edition of Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770; DNB) and lent Southey books.

Son of Benjamin Disraeli (1730–1816), a wealthy Italian-Jewish merchant. Isaac devoted his life to his library and miscellaneous literary works, most famously his Curiosities of Literature (1791). He corresponded with Southey on literary subjects on an intermittent basis, and dedicated the fourth edition of his The Literary Character; or the History of Men of Genius (1828) to him. Southey praised his good nature, but thought him a mixture of knowledge and ignorance. Isaac was the father of Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881; DNB, Hist P), Prime Minister, 1868, 1874–1880.

Radical satirist, journalist and bookseller. He was tried on three successive days, 18–20 December 1817, for blasphemous and seditious libel, but was acquitted after conducting his own defence, speaking for about seven hours on all three days. His The Political House that Jack Built (1819) was one of the most famous and bestselling satires of its day. In this phase of his career Southey regarded Hone with contempt and was anxious to see him jailed or transported. Hone later devoted himself to miscellaneous literature, and his political ideas modified as he became an increasingly devout Christian and an occasional correspondent of Southey’s.