Anthony Carlisle (1768-1840): Surgeon and anatomist. Born at Stillington, Durham, the third son of Thomas Carlisle and his first wife Barbara (d. 1768). Studied medicine in York, Durham and London, and was appointed surgeon to the Westminster Hospital in 1793. He married Martha Symmons in 1800 and in the same year was one of the founding members of the Royal College of Surgeons, serving as its president in 1829 and 1839. He moved in metropolitan literary and scientific circles, attending Mary Wollstonecraft on her death-bed in 1797.

George Canning (1770-1827): Contributor to the Anti-Jacobin, 1797–1798, and parodist there of Southey’s radical ballads. A Pittite in politics, Canning was Foreign Secretary 1807 until 1809, when he lost office after fighting a duel with another minister. In this capacity, he signed a treaty providing for the removal of the Portuguese court to Brazil, and sent British troops to the peninsula, though more tardily and in smaller numbers than Southey wished.

Henry ('Horse') Campbell (1774-1846): Clergyman. Educated at Christ Church, Oxford (BA 1792). A university friend of Southey’s, they did not keep in touch in later life. Their last meeting was at Falmouth in 1801, when Campbell was on his way to take up the living of St John’s in Antigua. Campbell was the illegitimate son of Henry Temple, 2nd Viscount Palmerston (1739–1802) and swiftly returned from Antigua to England when he received a considerable legacy at his father’s death.

William Calvert (1771-1829): Was at school with Wordsworth at Hawkshead, where he later became schoolmaster. On the death of his father, Calvert became a man of independent means, inheriting, alongside other property, the estate of Bowness on the east shore of Bassenthwaite, near Keswick. He was a member of Southey’s Lake District circle. His younger brother Raisley (1773–1795) left Wordsworth a legacy of £900.

John Mitchinson Calvert (1802-1842): The eldest son of William Calvert. He became a doctor and friend of the Scottish writer John Sterling (1806–1844; DNB), and through Sterling, made the acquaintance of Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881; DNB) and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873; DNB). Calvert suffered from tuberculosis and died at Falmouth on his way to Madeira.

Thomas Cadell (1773-1836): Bookseller. The son of the London bookseller Thomas Cadell (1742–1802; DNB), he took over his father’s business in 1793, working in partnership with William Davies (d. 1820; DNB).

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (1788-1824): Best-selling poet. His father, John Byron (1757–1791), was an army officer who squandered the inheritance of Byron’s mother, Catherine Gordon. At the age of ten, Byron inherited the title of Baron Byron of Rochdale and Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire from his great-uncle. Byron was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge, and composed poetry from childhood. His attacks on his contemporaries (including Southey) in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) made him well-known, despite the work’s anonymity.

John Marten Butt (1774-1846): Clergyman and author. Only son of George and Mary Martha Butt and brother of Mary Martha Sherwood (1775–1851; DNB), author of The Fairchild Family. Educated Westminster (adm. 1788) and Christ Church, Oxford (matric. 1792, BA 1796, MA 1799). Curate of Witley, Worcestershire; Rector of Oddingley, Worcestershire from 1806 and Vicar of East Garston, Berkshire from 1806. Author of The Last Vision of Daniel (1808) and other works. His first wife was Mary Ann Congreve; his second, Jemima Hubbal.

Eleanor Charlotte Butler (1739-1829): One of the ‘Ladies of Llangollen’. Butler was an Anglo-Irish woman who, despite family disapproval, in 1780 set up house with Sarah Ponsonby at Plas Newydd, on the outskirts of Llangollen, North Wales. Their relationship fascinated contemporaries and has continued to attract speculation. Although the Ladies were famed for their lifestyle of retirement, simplicity and self-improvement, they received many guests – both admirers and tourists. Southey visited in 1811.

Charles Butler (1750-1832): Leading Catholic layman, lawyer and writer, especially on legal matters. In 1791 he became the first Catholic called to the Bar since the Revolution of 1688; he was closely involved in attempts to secure Catholic Emancipation from parliament. Southey met him in 1811 and found him ‘thoroughly amiable’. However, he replied to Southey’s Book of the Church (1824) with a defence of Catholicism, The Book of the Catholic Church (1825). This in turn provoked Southey’s Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anglicanae (1826).