Lawyer and poet; only son of William Rough. Educated Westminster (adm. 1786, King’s Scholar 1789) and Trinity College, Cambridge (matric. 1792, BA 1796, MA 1799), he entered Gray’s Inn in 1796, and was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1801. He married Harriet (1778–c. 1820), an illegitimate daughter of John Wilkes (1725–1797; DNB). He served in the judiciary in Demerara and Essequibo and later Ceylon and was knighted in 1837. His literary works included Lorenzo di Medici (1797), The Conspiracy of Gowrie (1800), and Lines on the Death of Sir Ralph Abercromby (1800). He was also a contributor to the Gentleman’s Magazine and the Monthly Magazine. Rough and Southey were friends whilst at Westminster School and remained in contact in later life. He was rumoured to have contributed to The Flagellant (1792).

Chemist. Third son of the potter Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795; DNB). He inherited a substantial fortune of the death of his father and dedicated this to supporting writers and scientists. He was a patron of Beddoes’ Pneumatic Medical Institution and of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He participated in Davy’s Bristol experiments with nitrous oxide and later attended his lectures at the Royal Institution.

Unmarried daughter of Wade Browne by his first wife. Southey visited the family home in Ludlow when she was a young woman and later corresponded with her.

Son of a retired officer from Totnes, Devon. He cherished ambitions for a poetic career. As a schoolboy in 1811 he canvassed Walter Scott’s advice and was politely encouraged to improve his writing by gaining more knowledge. In 1813 Dusautoy sent some of his verses to Southey. The latter replied and a correspondence about Dusautoy’s career ensued. He took Southey’s advice and was admitted to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1813. In 1814 he entered an ode, in Spenserian stanzas, for a university prize in English poetry. He did not win, but did very well in examinations and seemed to have a promising future. However, in 1815 he fell victim to an epidemic sweeping Cambridge. Southey blamed himself, noting that without his encouragement Dusautoy would never have been at the university and would therefore have not contracted the fatal disease. As a tribute, he proposed publishing a selection of Dusautoy’s writing. However, when he obtained the manuscripts, Southey felt they would not suit public taste: ‘To me … the most obvious faults … are the most unequivocal proofs of genius in the author, as being efforts of a mind conscious of a strength which it had not yet learnt to use … But common readers read only to be amused, and to them these pieces would appear crude and extravagant, because they would only see what is, without any reference to what might have been’. The edition of Dusautoy was therefore abandoned.

The only child of George and Barbara Seton and a cousin of Agnes (1764–1852; DNB) and Mary (1763–1852; DNB) Berry, friends of Horace Walpole (1717–1797; DNB). In 1807, she married the Revd James Bannister, Rector of Iddesleigh. Her date of death is unknown, but she is said to have been living in Honiton, Devon in 1838. Seton met Southey during his second visit to Portugal in 1800–1801, and corresponded with him until 1810. She was on very good terms with both Southey and his wife.

Eldest son of the wealthy Sussex landowner, baronet and MP, Sir Timothy Shelley (1753–1844). He became a published poet and novelist while still at Eton and was expelled from University College, Oxford, in March 1811 for writing The Necessity of Atheism (1811). In August 1811 he eloped with, and married, Harriet Westbrook (1795–1816), causing a temporary breakdown in relations with his family. Shelley admired some of Southey’s poetry, especially Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) and The Curse of Kehama (1810), and engaged in a number of intense conversations with the older man while Shelley lodged in Keswick in 1811–1812. Southey saw Shelley as a ‘ghost’ of his own past, who would grow out of his heterodox opinions. He directed Shelley to the work of the philosopher George Berkeley (1685–1743; DNB), as an antidote to atheism, thus profoundly influencing Shelley’s intellectual development. Shelley left suddenly for Ireland in February 1812 and the two men did not meet again. However, this was not the end of their relationship. Southey took an increasingly hostile view of Shelley’s politics and his abandonment of his first wife. Shelley (erroneously) believed that Southey had attacked him in the Quarterly Review in 1820, leading to an acrimonious exchange of letters.

Fellow and then Provost of Oriel College, Oxford, and Bishop of Llandaff 1827–1849. Copleston was a writer on theological, social and economic subjects, from a liberal Tory viewpoint, and a leading figure in Oxford University. He gained Southey’s approval through his Three Replies to the Calumnies of the Edinburgh Review (1810–1811), which attacked the Edinburgh Review’s criticism of Oxford’s teaching.

Book-collector and part-proprietor of the Monthly Mirror. Born in Lancaster in May 1760, he went at an early age to London, where for many years he carried on an extensive business as a drysalter at Queenhithe. He patronized Robert Bloomfield, whose The Farmer’s Boy he read in manuscript and recommended to a publisher. In his role as part-owner of the Monthly Mirror he befriended one of its contributors, the youthful Henry Kirke White. Southey believed that Hill owned probably ‘the best existing collection of English poetry’.

Writer. Sister of Charles Lamb. She suffered from bouts of insanity and in 1796 she killed their mother. After this incident she was cared for by her brother or in asylums. The siblings wrote Tales from Shakespeare (1809) together.

Unitarian minister and schoolmaster. Born at Eastwood, Yorkshire, he was educated at Leeds Grammar, Hoxton Academy and Hackney College. In 1787 he converted to Unitarianism. From 1787–1792 he was assistant minister of the Old Meeting, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. He was a foundation member of the Unitarian Society in 1791 and in 1792 was elected evening preacher at the chapel at Hackney in which Joseph Priestley preached in the mornings. In 1794 he married Priscilla Hurry, daughter of a Yarmouth timber merchant. They had ten children, of whom the fifth was the theologian Frederick Denison Maurice (1805–1872; DNB). Maurice was distantly connected by marriage to William Taylor. The latter was involved in securing a place for Henry Herbert Southey at the school Maurice ran at Normanston manor house, near the Suffolk port of Lowestoft.

Poet and banker. His writings included The Pleasures of Memory (1792), ‘Columbus’ (1810), ‘Jacqueline’ (1814) and Italy (1822 and 1828). A wealthy, metropolitan Dissenter, Rogers was exceptionally well connected and had many acquaintances in common with Southey. They were on social terms, meeting occasionally and corresponding intermittently. They shared an interest in assisting others, a trait Southey drew on in 1816 when he asked Rogers to help the young poet Herbert Knowles.

When a resident of Nether Stowey he was introduced to Southey, Wordsworth and Coleridge by Thomas Poole. Kenyon was a very wealthy man, with extensive land holdings in Jamaica. He was well known for his generosity and contributed to the costs of Derwent Coleridge’s education. He was one of the party who accompanied Southey on his final tour of France in 1838.

Politician and writer. Educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. In the mid 1790s, Carysfort developed an interest in Southey’s poetry, communicating with him through his cousin and Southey’s patron Charles Wynn. Southey arranged for Carysfort to be sent copies of his books, though any letters he wrote to the peer have not survived. Carysfort’s critiques of ‘The Retrospect’ and Madoc are in National Library of Wales, NLW MS 4819. Carysfort’s own Dramatic and Narrative Poems were published in 1810.

Childhood friend of Southey. A servant of Elizabeth Tyler, Southey’s aunt, and a recruit to Pantisocracy.

Brought up in Suffolk as a farmhand, Bloomfield became a shoemaker in London. His Georgic poem The Farmer’s Boy (1800) sold over 25,000 copies, and later collections Rural Tales (1802) and Wild Flowers (1806) also sold by the thousands. After 1813, owing to the bankruptcy of his publisher, Bloomfield was afflicted by poverty; Southey advised on schemes to raise money for his benefit. Bloomfield and Southey briefly corresponded in 1817.

Scottish poet and, from 1809, a clergyman of the Church of Scotland. He published The Sabbath (1804) (reviewed by Southey in the Annual Review (1806)), British Georgics (1808) (reviewed by Southey in the Quarterly Review (1810)), and The Siege of Copenhagen; a Poem (1808). In 1811 Southey wrote of him: ‘His understanding was not equal to his genius, & it required the sunshine of a brighter fortune than ever fell to his lot to counteract a natural melancholy, the constitutional mental disease of men whose feelings are stronger than their intellect … his Sabbath will always remain, – & from all his other pieces … a few rare passages may be culled which the best of us might have been proud to have written.’

Fourth son of Herbert and Catherine Hill. He became a lawyer.

Courtier and physician. He became a friend of Henry Herbert Southey while the two men were studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and set up a London practice in 1806. He was appointed physician to the Prince of Wales (the future George IV) in 1810 and gradually assumed the role of sorting out the Prince’s tangled finances. In 1822 he became Keeper of the Privy Purse and, effectively, George IV’s private secretary. Knighton furthered Henry Herbert’s career, ensuring he succeeded him as physician to George IV in 1823. Knighton also aided Robert Southey by presenting A Vision of Judgement (1821) to George IV.

Anglican clergyman, Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, 1810–1828, and later Rector of Freckenham, Suffolk, 1829–1835. Tilbrook was on good terms with Wordsworth, near whose home at Rydal he purchased a cottage, the ‘Ivy Cot’. Southey corresponded with him over a number of charitable projects, including plans to help James Dusautoy and Robert Bloomfield. Tillbrook also published an extended critique of Southey’s use of hexameters in A Vision of Judgement (1821).

Prominent English merchant in Lisbon, admitted to the British Factory in 1774. Southey came to know him well during his visit to Portugal in 1800–1801. He appreciated Bell’s wide knowledge of the country and benefitted from his connections to Portuguese intellectual life. Bell’s special interest was numismatics.

Wealthy merchant, based in Portugal. He first met Southey in 1800, when he was the packet agent at Lisbon. In 1815 his daughter Louisa married Henry Herbert Southey.

A shepherd by upbringing, Hogg taught himself to read and write and became an admirer of the verse of Burns. Scott employed him to help compile his collection of ballads, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Hogg published a collection of poems, The Mountain Bard, in 1807, and another, The Forest Minstrel, in 1810. A fringe member of the Edinburgh literary set, Hogg communicated news of forthcoming critical reviews to Southey, and was himself featured, mockingly, in Blackwoods Magazine.

A wealthy Quaker merchant who lived at Stockwell Park, Surrey, with his second wife, Anne Reynolds (dates unknown) of Carshalton. The Smiths were friends of Grosvenor Charles Bedford and Duppa.

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.