Joseph John Gurney (1788–1847): Member of the Gurney family of Quakers and bankers, based in Norwich. He became a partner in the family bank in 1805 and soon came to play a leading role in its operations. However, his sister was the prison reformer, Elizabeth Fry (1780–1845; DNB) and he spent much of his life campaigning to help prisoners, abolish capital punishment and end the slave trade. Gurney was also a key spokesman for evangelicalism within Quakerism.

Thomas Grenville (1755–1846): Charles Watkin Williams Wynn’s uncle. First Lord of the Admiralty, 1806–1807.

Anne Grant (1755–1838): Scottish poet and author, best known for Memoirs of an American Lady (1809) – a work that was greatly admired by Southey. Born Ann Macvicar, she grew up mainly in New York and Vermont, before her family moved back to Scotland in 1768. In 1778 she married a clergyman, James Grant, and after his death in 1801 supported herself from her writings and by taking in pupils. She was a prominent figure in Edinburgh literary life and Southey met her when he visited the city on 17–18 August 1819. They later corresponded briefly on literary matters.

James Grahame (1765–1811): Scottish poet and, from 1809, a clergyman of the Church of Scotland. He published The Sabbath (1804) (reviewed by Southey in the Annual Review (1806)), British Georgics (1808) (reviewed by Southey in the Quarterly Review (1810)), and The Siege of Copenhagen; a Poem (1808).

George Bellas Greenough (1778–1855): Geologist and MP. He was the only surviving child of George Bellas (d. 1784) and his wife Sarah. In 1795 he adopted the surname of his maternal grandfather, the wealthy apothecary Thomas Greenough, on inheriting the latter’s fortune. A Dissenter, he completed his studies at the University of Göttingen in the late 1790s and befriended Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He returned to England in 1801 and was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1807. In the same year he was a founder-member of the club that became the Royal Geological Society.

Edmund Goodenough (1785–1845): Headmaster of Westminster School 1819–1828. He was a clergyman and later Dean of Wells 1831–1845. Southey wrote to him in his capacity as Headmaster of Westminster School.

James Gooden (1773–1851): A merchant in the Portugal and Brazil trade with literary and antiquarian tastes. He assembled an impressive collection of books and manuscripts on Brazil and Southey thanked Gooden for lending him ‘the Life of F. Joam d’Almeida, among other books, and a manuscript Apology for the Jesuits in Paraguay and Maranham, of great importance’; see Southey’s History of Brazil, 3 vols (London, 1810–1819), II, p. [v].

Sarah Gooch, née Travers (b. 1788): Second wife of Robert Gooch, whom she married in January 1814. She was the sister of the surgeon Benjamin Travers (1783–1858).

Robert Gooch (1784–1830): Obstetric physician from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. He became a close friend of Henry Herbert Southey when they both studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and also knew William Taylor. Gooch graduated MD in 1807 and became, as Henry also did, a contributor to the journal the London Medical Record. In 1811–1812 Gooch set up a successful medical practice in London, and published important works on puerperal fever. Gooch met Southey on a tour of the Lakes in 1811 and the two began a lifelong correspondence.

William Gonne (d.1815): Wealthy merchant, based in Portugal. He first met Southey in 1800, when he was the packet agent at Lisbon. In 1815 his daughter Louisa married Henry Herbert Southey.