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.

William Godwin (1756–1836): Philosopher, journalist and novelist. Godwin was born in Wisbech and grew up in a middle class and fiercely Nonconformist household. He was educated at Hoxton Academy and was a Congregationalist Minister in Suffolk 1778–1782, before resigning his post and moving to London to try and make a living from literary work. His views became increasingly radical, and he embraced atheism and philosophical anarchism.

Robert Pearse Gillies (1788–1858): Born in Forfarshire, the son of a small landowner. After losing most of his fortune, he settled in Edinburgh in 1815 and pursued a literary career. Gillies became an expert on German literature, publishing many translations in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, and was a close friend of Walter Scott. At Scott’s suggestion, he persuaded Messrs Truettel and Wurtz to set up the Foreign Quarterly Review in 1827, with Gillies as editor; Southey contributed to the first issue.

William Gilbert (1763–1824): Poet and astrologer. Born in Antigua, son of Nathaniel Gilbert, speaker of the Antiguan House of Assembly. In 1788 he came to England to work as a lawyer, but suffered a mental collapse and was placed in an asylum run by Richard Henderson (1736/7–1792) at Hanham near Bristol. (In an earlier career as a schoolmaster, Henderson had numbered Joseph Cottle among his pupils.) Gilbert was released after a year and went to London, where he worked as an astrologer and maker of magic talismans.

William Gifford (1756–1826): Long known to Southey as a Tory critic and editor of the Anti-Jacobin, Gifford became the first editor in 1809 of a new conservative journal begun on Southey’s advice – the Quarterly Review. Gifford then approached Southey through their mutual friend Grosvenor Charles Bedford to be a contributor. Gifford continued as editor until 1824, frequently the target of Southey’s ire over the cuts and interpolations he made to Southey’s contributions.