Mary Barker (1774–1853): Author, painter and close friend of Robert Southey. Born in Congreve, Staffordshire, daughter of Thomas Barker, an ironmaster, and Mary Homfray. Author of A Welsh Story (1798), she moved in literary circles. She met Southey in Portugal in 1800 and subsequently visited the Southeys frequently in Bristol, London and Keswick. She was godmother to Southey’s first child, Margaret (d. 1803). Southey had a high opinion of Mary Barker’s talents and proposed that she should illustrate Madoc (1805). She appears as the ‘Bhow Begum’ in The Doctor (1834–1847).

Thomas Foster Barham (1766-1844): Writer. The third son of Joseph Foster Barham, he was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, but left without taking a degree. His marriage to Mary Ann Morton in 1790 produced six children. He was associated with the mercantile house of Plummer & Co, but retired to the West of England in 1806 due to ill health, settling at Leskinnick, near Penzance.

Anna Letitia Barbauld (née Aikin; 1743-1825): Poet, essayist and children’s author, sister of John Aikin and aunt of Arthur Aikin, Southey’s editor at the Annual Review. She married the Revd Rochemont Barbauld (1749–1808) on 26 May 1774. Barbauld and Southey met in 1797 and had many acquaintances in common, including George Dyer, William Godwin and Joseph Johnson. Barbauld was publicly linked with the literary and scientific experimentalism of Southey’s circle, and featured in the Anti-Jacobin satire ‘The Pneumatic Revellers’ (1800).

John Ballantyne (1774-1821): The younger brother of James, and a partner in the publishing firm with him and Scott.

James Ballantyne (1772-1833): Printer and schoolfriend of Walter Scott. He printed Southey’s Madoc (1805) and many of his subsequent poems. Ballantyne’s printing business, in which Scott had a secret share, became one of the most highly regarded and profitable of the first decade of the nineteenth century. In 1809 Southey agreed to provide historical material for the Edinburgh Annual Register, issued by the related publishing firm in which Ballantyne, Scott and Ballantyne’s younger brother John were partners.

Robert Baldwin (1780-1858): Printer, publisher and bookseller, in partnership with Charles Cradock from 1810. He founded the London Magazine in 1820–1821 and commissioned Southey to produce an edition of The Works of William Cowper (1835–1837). Baldwin’s firm went bankrupt and this involved Southey in an extensive correspondence before he received part of the payment he was promised. Baldwin spent the rest of his life as stock-keeper of the Stationers’ Company.

George Baird (1761-1840): Church of Scotland minister and Principal of Edinburgh University. A gifted modern linguist, he also had a keen interest in education, especially schemes for the education of the poor in the Scottish islands and highlands. He was on good terms with Andrew Bell, persuading the latter to bequeath £5,000 for this purpose. In 1827 Baird wrote to Southey requesting that he write a poem, probably supporting Baird’s work as convenor of the Highlands and Islands Committee of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

Joanna Baillie (1762-1851): Scottish poet and dramatist, best-known for A Series of Plays: In which it is Attempted to Delineate the Stronger Passions of the Mind (1798¬–1812), which Southey greatly admired. Baillie’s first plays and poems were published anonymously in 1790, and her authorship was not revealed until 1800. Her father, James Baillie (c.

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).