Edward Everett (1794–1865): American polymath and politician. Everett was appointed to a newly endowed Chair in Greek at Harvard in 1815. This permitted him to study and travel in Europe, which he did between 1815–1819, enrolling for part of this time at Göttingen University alongside his friend George Ticknor. In summer 1818 Everett visited the Lakes and called on Southey. The latter described him as ‘one of the most interesting men I have seen’. Everett returned to America in 1819 and became editor of the North American Review in the following year.

Greeton Evans: In 1814 Southey received a letter from ‘Greeton Evans’, who claimed to be a labouring class poet from rural North Wales seeking the Poet Laureate’s advice. Southey was impressed and offered to help the young man. He was shortly afterwards forced to conclude the letter was a hoax.

Susanna Bishop Estlin (d. 1842): The second wife of John Prior Estlin.

John Prior Estlin (1747–1817): Unitarian minister, at Lewin’s Mead Chapel, Bristol, and school master. Educated at the Warrington Academy, he moved to Bristol in 1771. Married Mary Coates (1753–1783) and, after her death, Susanna Bishop (d. 1842). He was on good terms with a number of writers, including Southey (whom he had taught briefly when he took over Mr Foot’s school, Bristol), Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Anna Letitia Barbauld. His publications included The Nature and Causes of Atheism (1797).

Henry Erskine (1746–1817): Lawyer and politician. Younger brother of the barrister and, from 1806–7, Lord Chancellor Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine (1750–1823; DNB).

Peter Elmsley (1774–1825): Classical scholar. Son of Alexander Elmsley. He was named after his uncle, the famous London bookseller from whom he inherited a considerable fortune. Educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford (matric. 1791, BA 1794, MA 1797, BD and DD 1823), he was described as ‘the fattest undergraduate of his day’ (DNB). Ordained and presented to the living of Little Horkesley, Essex, on his uncle’s death in 1802 he relinquished his duties and income to a curate, though he continued to hold the living until 1816.

George Ellis (1753–1815): Man of letters. Ellis entered parliament in 1796 as junior member for Seaford; he never spoke in the house, and did not stand for re-election. He collaborated with George Canning and William Gifford on the journal The Anti-Jacobin; and he was a friend, from 1801, of Walter Scott. Ellis’s Specimens of the Early English Poets (1790, 2nd edn. 1801, 3rd edn. 1803) provided the model for Southey’s Specimens of the Later English Poets (1807).

Ebenezer Elliott (1781–1849): The ‘Corn-Law Rhymer’. Son of an ironmaster, Elliott became an amateur botanist and a self-taught poet after his brother introduced him to Thomson’s Seasons. From 1808, when Elliott first requested Southey’s advice, Southey encouraged his poetic career: Elliott later declared that Southey had taught him the art of poetry. He published Night, or, the Legend of Wharncliffe in 1818 and Tales of the Night in 1820.

Thomas (fl. 1750–1830) and John (d. 1795) Egerton: London publishers and booksellers. Southey and his collaborators Bedford and Wynn, employed the Egertons as printers for the first five numbers of the schoolboy magazine The Flagellant, which appeared between 1–29 March 1792. The fifth issue contained a controversial essay denouncing flogging as an invention of the devil. Under pressure from Dr William Vincent, the Head Master of Westminster School, the Egertons revealed that Southey was its author.

Charles Edwards (1797–1868): A Cambridge solicitor who later emigrated to New York. He was the author of Hofer, and Other Poems (1820), which quoted from Southey’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal (1797) (p. 74). In December 1819, Edwards approached Southey and asked for a favour (possibly a contribution to Hofer), which Southey declined to perform.