Antoine André Bruguière, Baron de Sorsum (1773-1823): French author and translator, who had served as secretary to Jérôme Bonaparte (1784–1860), when the latter was King of Westphalia (1807–1813). He produced translations of works by Byron, Sir William Jones, James Macpherson, and Shakespeare. In 1821 he translated Southey’s Roderick, the Last of the Goths (1814) into French.
William Bruce (fl. 1800s-1820s): Captain in the Bombay Marine service of the East India Company and British Resident at Bushire in Iran 1803–1807, 1808–1822. He met Southey at Buckland, the home of Caroline Bowles, and in 1826 sent Southey a case of Shiraz wine, for which Southey thanked him.
Wade Browne (1760-1821): 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.
Sarah Browne (1793/1794-1860s): 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.
Elizabeth Browne (dates unknown): 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.
Elizabeth Browne (née Jones; dates unknown): The second wife of Wade Browne, by whom she had one daughter, Mary (1810–1892).
Charlotte Broome (1761-1838): Daughter of the musicologist Charles Burney (1726–1814; DNB) and his first wife Esther Sleepe (d. 1762), and younger sister of the novelist Fanny Burney (1752–1840; DNB) and of Southey’s friend James Burney. She married, firstly, the physician Clement Francis (c. 1744–1792) and, secondly, the stockjobber, pamphleteer and poet Ralph Broome (1742–1805). In 1818 Broome asked Southey for a poem commemorating her younger son Ralph Broome (1801–1817).
John Trotter Brockett (c. 1788-1842): Antiquary. Son of the County Durham lawyer and mathematician John Brockett (1764–1827) and Frances Sophia (c. 1770–1833). In 1814 he married Isabella (d. 1865), eldest daughter of the merchant John Bell. Brockett practised law in Newcastle and also cultivated his interests in numismatics, antiquities and philology. He was a member of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society and a founder member of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle Upon Tyne. He was also elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
John Britton (1771-1857): Antiquary and topographer, co-editor of the illustrated topographical survey, in 27 volumes, The Beauties of England and Wales (1801–1818) and editor of Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain. Southey corresponded with him about Chatterton, and Britton’s book on the latter appeared in 1813.
John Bowring (1792-1872): Politician, diplomat and writer. He was the eldest son of the Exeter wool merchant Charles Bowring (1769–1856) and his wife Sarah Jane Anne (d. 1828). A Unitarian, he worked initially for his father’s wool business and then in the counting-house of Kennaway & Co. In 1811 he moved to London where he was employed by Milford & Co, suppliers to Wellington’s troops in the Iberian peninsula. Bowring travelled widely in Europe on company business.
