John Wither Awdry (1795-1878): Eldest surviving son of the solicitor, John Awdry (1766–1844), and Jane, née Bigg-Wither (1770–1845), sister of Herbert Hill’s wife, Catherine. Awdry was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, graduating with a First in 1816. He was elected a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, at the same time as Hartley Coleridge in April 1819. He later qualified as a barrister, was knighted in 1830 and rose to the Supreme Court of Judicature in Bombay 1839–1842.

Ann Attersol [also known as Ann Holmes, Ann Hunter, Ann Doherty, Ann de la Pigueliere] (c. 1786-1831/1832): Daughter of Thomas Holmes (1751–1827), a wealthy East India merchant, who changed his name to Hunter on inheriting the Gobions estate in Hertfordshire in 1802 from his wife’s grandfather. The same year, Ann Holmes eloped, aged sixteen, with Hugh Doherty, an impecunious thirty-year-old Irishman and officer in the Light Dragoons. Their marriage soon broke down, and Doherty published his account of events in The Discovery (1807).

Edward Erasmus Atkins (d. 1820/1821?): In 1820–1821, Atkins wrote (anonymously) to Southey about the latter’s proposed ‘Life of George Fox and the Rise and Progress of Quakerism’. Southey replied, but Atkins died before the letter reached him; see New Letters of Robert Southey, ed. Kenneth Curry, 2 vols (New York and London, 1965), II, p. 222, n. 1, which contains the only definite information about Atkins.

Edwin Atherstone (1788-1872): Poet and writer. He was born in Nottingham, son of the dyer Hugh Atherstone (1743–1816) and his wife Ann (1747–1819). He was educated at Fulneck Moravian school. From 1807 he worked as a music teacher at the Franciscan convent school, Taunton, Somerset. He met Thomas Poole and probably through him made acquaintance with Southey. He published his first volume of poetry – The Last Days of Herculaneum; and Abradates and Panthea – in 1821.

Aaron Arrowsmith (1750-1823): Cartographer of Soho Square, London, renowned for his 1790 large chart of the world. Among Arrowsmith’s other productions were A Map Exhibiting All the New Discoveries in the Interior Parts of North America (1795, rev. 1801, 1802, 1804), Chart of the South Pacific (1798) and A New Map of Africa (1802). Southey employed him to make an accurate map of South America for the first volume of his History of Brazil and suggested several books as sources for information about geographical locations.

Thomas Amyot (1775-1850): Lawyer and antiquary, who had been private secretary to William Windham (1750–1819; DNB), 1806–1810. He sent Southey papers relating to the campaign in Spain and Portugal.

Washington Allston (1779-1843): American painter and poet. During his time in Rome in 1805–1808 he formed a close friendship with Coleridge, and the two greatly influenced each others’ ideas about the fine arts. Allston lived in England 1811–1818 and gained some renown for his The Dead Man Restored to Life by Touching the Bones of the Prophet Elisha (1811–1814). Southey met him in 1813 and shared Coleridge’s admiration for Allston’s works.

Robert Allen (1772-1805): 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’.

John Aikin (1747-1822): 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.

Arthur Aikin (1773-1854): 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.