Simon Wilkin (1790–1862): Owner of a paper mill in Norwich, with wide interests, including entomology. Bankruptcy led him to establish a printing and publishing business in Norwich which produced the work of, among others, Amelia Opie and William Taylor. His most impressive project was his new edition of the life and works of Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682; DNB), which finally appeared in 1835–1836. Southey advised Wilkin on the early stages of this project and greatly admired Wilkin’s work.

John Wilson [pseud. Christopher North] (1785–1854): Scottish author and journalist from a wealthy family. He was an early admirer of Wordsworth and settled in the Lake District in 1805. Southey did not know him well. Financial losses forced Wilson into journalism and he became the mainstay of Blackwood’s Magazine 1817–1854, where he wrote some notorious attacks on his former idols, Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Glocester [also Gloucester] Wilson (c. 1770–1850): Civil Servant. Son of Edward Wilson (1739–1804), Prebendary of Gloucester Cathedral and Canon of Windsor and Sarah Wilson, née Giffin (1734–1810). Edward Wilson had been a tutor to the young William Pitt. He was appointed one of the Commissioners of Customs in 1799, was a Fellow of the Royal Society and wrote two works in opposition to a return to the gold standard in 1811–1812. Wilson married Elizabeth Whitear (1775–1852), widow of Francis North (1778–1821), in 1825 and retired to Hastings in later life.

Thomas Wilkinson (1751–1836): Cumbrian landscape gardener, who owned a small estate at Yanwath, south of Penrith, and advised William Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale, on improvements to his grounds. Wilkinson, a Quaker, was a friend of Thomas Clarkson and of Wordsworth. A keen fellwalker and a poet, Wilkinson published Tours to the British Mountains; with the Descriptive Poems of Lowther, and Emont Vale (1824).

Helen Maria Williams (1759–1827): Writer. She was the daughter of Charles Williams (d. 1762) and his second wife Helen Hay (1730–1812). Her early writings included Edwin and Eltruda (1782), Peru (1784) and Poems (1786); the latter elicited a tribute from William Wordsworth, his first publication (‘Sonnet on Seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams Weep at a Tale of Distress’). She moved in the circles that included Anna Letitia Barbauld, William Godwin, Samuel Rogers and Anna Seward, and was a committed abolitionist.

Robert Wilberforce (1802–1857): The second son of William Wilberforce and his wife Barbara. He was educated privately and then at Oriel College, Oxford, becoming a Fellow of the latter in 1826. However, he resigned his Fellowship in 1831 and took up a career in the Church of England, becoming Archdeacon of the East Riding in 1841. He was close to many of the leading figures in the Oxford Movement and converted to Roman Catholicism in 1854. Wilberforce met Southey as a young man during family visits to the Lake District.

Elijah Waring (c. 1788–1857): Writer. Born in Alton, Hampshire, he was the son of Jeremiah Waring. He moved to Wales in c. 1810, living in Swansea and then Neath. He established the short-lived English-language periodical The Cambrian Visitor: A Monthly Miscellany in 1813. In 1817 he married Deborah (c. 1786–1867), sister of the prominent Quaker ironmaster and philanthropist Joseph Tregelles Price (1784–1854; DNB). Waring himself later abandoned Quakerism and joined the Wesleyan Methodists.

James White (1787–1885): Younger brother of Henry Kirke and (John) Neville White. He attended Pembroke College, Cambridge, graduating in 1815; Southey sent him some encouraging letters when White was disappointed by his academic performance. White never married and became a clergyman. Initially, he held difficult curacies in industrial parishes in West Bromwich and then St George’s, Manchester (1826–42) – Southey helped him acquire the latter post.

John Neville White (1782–1845): Elder brother of Henry Kirke White. He was called by his second name, 'Neville'. Southey greatly admired him and the two men became regular correspondents. He initially trained as a medical student in London, but then became a hosiery merchant. In the latter capacity he was able to help Southey acquire books and newspapers from South America for his work on the Edinburgh Annual Register (1810–13) and the History of Brazil (1810–19).

William Webb (c. 1771–1845): Deputy Commissary-General in the British Army. Webb had written to Southey in 1817 to defend the quality of the horses sent out to Portugal in 1808 to pull the British Army’s artillery and Southey had included Webb’s defence at History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (London, 1823–1832), I, pp. 554–555. The poor quality of the artillery horses was one of the reasons given for British forces not advancing after their victory in the Battle of Vimeiro (1808). In 1824 he solicited Southey’s advice on finding a publisher.