Richard Sharp (1759–1835): Businessman, Dissenter, radical and writer, but most famous for his conversational powers – hence his nickname ‘Conversation’ Sharp. He was born in Newfoundland, the son of the elder Richard Sharp, an army officer. But the family soon returned to England and Sharp took over his grandfather’s hat-making business, later moving into the West India trade. He was a member of various radical organisations in the 1790s and Whig MP for Castle Rising 1806–1812 and Portarlington 1816–1819.

Seward family: A Worcestershire family consisting of four brothers and three sisters. The death of Southey’s close friend Edmund Seward in 1795 was followed by that of his brother John (educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, MB 1795, and physician to the Worcester infirmary) in December 1797. Some time afterwards, the eldest brother, William (a lawyer, based in Ledbury, Herefordshire) shot himself. A fourth brother, whose name Southey does not record, was a ‘mere farmer’ of a ‘methodistical turn’. Of the sisters, one married Mr Severn (a clergyman) and two remained unmarried.

Edmund Seward (c. 1770/71–1795): The youngest son of John Seward of Sapey, Worcestershire. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford (matric. 1789, BA 1793). Seward was one of Southey’s closest friends at Oxford, and an important influence on him. An early enthusiast for Pantisocracy, Seward later withdrew from the scheme and felt himself partly to blame for what he described as ‘having contrived to bring [Southey] ... into ... a calamitous & ruinous ... adventure, from which I might at first perhaps have diverted him’.

Anna Seward (1742–1809): 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.

Barbara Seton (dates unknown): 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.

Humphrey Senhouse (1773–1842): 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.

Margaret Charlotte Scott (née Carpenter; 1770–1826): Walter Scott’s wife.

Walter Scott (1771–1832): Poet and novelist. Scott and Southey first met in October 1805, when their mutual interest in chivalric romances brought them together. Scott reviewed Southey’s Amadis of Gaul in the Annual Review, and The Chronicle of the Cid and The Curse of Kehama in the Quarterly Review, while Southey reviewed Scott’s Sir Tristram in the Annual.

Poet and scholar. Sayers was born in London but after his father died when Sayers was a child, he spent his early years mainly in Suffolk and Norfolk. Sayers inherited a small estate from his grandfather in 1778 and qualified as a doctor in the Netherlands but decided to concentrate on literature from 1789 onwards. He settled in Norwich and became a central figure in the city’s intellectual life – William Taylor was an old schoolfriend.

Mary Sawier (d. before April 1798): The widow of a Bristol accountant and Southey’s landlady in College Street, Bristol in 1795. Her daughter married James Jennings.