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.

Richard Boyle Adderley (d. 1857): A friend of Southey’s during his time at Westminster School. His family were from Innishannon, Co. Cork; in later life he was a barrister and civil servant.

John Adamson (1787-1855): Solicitor, antiquary, Portuguese scholar and leading figure in the intellectual life of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He corresponded with Southey over their shared interest in Portuguese literature and translation. His Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Luis de Camoens (1820) was greatly admired by Southey.

Manuel Abella (1753-1817): Spanish scholar, historian and archivist. He was one of the secretaries to the commission that drew up the plans for the Cortes that met in 1810 and later served in that body as a deputy from Aragon. In 1810-1811 he was in London as secretary to the Duke of Albuquerque, the Cortes’s representative in the United Kingdom. At this time, Southey (who had been given an introduction to Abella by Henry Crabb Robinson) wrote to him requesting documents that might help with accounts of the Peninsular War Southey was producing for the Edinburgh Annual Register.