Thomas (‘Tom'; 1777–1838)Sailor and farmer. Southey’s younger brother and the one to whom he was in the 1790s closest. Tom entered the navy as a midshipman at the age of 12, saw action in several major battles of the French revolutionary wars (including Cape St Vincent and Copenhagen), was captured on one occasion, wounded on several others, and was made a lieutenant as reward for his bravery in the fight between Mars and L’Hercule on 21 April 1798.

Hugh Chudleigh Standert (1782–1850): Surgeon at Taunton with literary inclinations, and a friend of James Montgomery. Standert was known to Southey through the latter’s extensive family connections in Taunton and the two men occasionally corresponded.

Philippa Elizabeth Dorothy Malone, Lady Sunderlin (née Rooper; 1745–1831): Daughter of Godolphin Rooper (1709–1790) of Berkampstead, she married Lord Sunderlin in 1778. The couple had no children.

Daniel Stuart (1766–1846): Newspaper proprietor and journalist. Originally a printer, he bought the Morning Post in 1795 and turned it into the leading anti-government newspaper and a very profitable venture. Though he sold the Morning Post in 1803, he retained an interest in the Courier, which he acquired in 1800–1801, though it is disputed how much influence he had over the newspaper’s contents. Stuart employed Southey to write poems for the Morning Post at a guinea a week in 1798–1799, and again in 1801–1803.

James Stanger (1743–1829): Member of a long-established Cumberland family, he had made a fortune in London as a partner in a firm of wholesale linen drapers and warehousemen, and bought an estate at Crosthwaite in 1810, where he built a new house called Dove Cote. He was on good terms with Southey and his family.

Charles Swan (b. 1797–?1838): Writer and clergyman, whose works included Gesta Romanorum; or Entertaining Moral Stories (1824). From Morton, near Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, he attended Catherine Hall, Cambridge, matriculating in 1817. He was ordained as a deacon in 1820 and, in 1824, took up the post of Chaplain on HMS Cambrian. He published an account of his experiences as Journal of a Voyage Up the Mediterranean, Principally Among the Islands of the Archipelago and In Asia Minor, Including Many Interesting Particulars Relative to the Greek Revolution.

Charles Benjamin Tayler (1797–1875): Clergyman and writer for the young. Southey wrote to him in 1820 in connection with some poems Tayler had sent him.

James Tate (1771–1843): Schoolmaster, clergyman, and classicist. Educated at the Grammar School in Richmond, Yorkshire, and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. In 1796 he became headmaster of Richmond School and transformed it into an educational powerhouse. He rejected corporal punishment and instead attempted to enthuse pupils with his own love of learning. He published textbooks on the classics and also Horatius Restitutus (1832), which attempted to arrange the works of Horace in chronological order. Politically he was a Whig and a proponent of Catholic Emancipation.

George Strachey (1776–1849): Officer of the East India Company. Son of John Strachey. Educated at Westminster (adm. 1787) and Trinity College, Cambridge (BA 1795; MA 1822). Writer EICS (Madras) 1796; Assistant in the Military, Secret and Political Department, 1798; Joint Assay Master, 1807; Private Secretary to the Governor, 1808; Judge and Magistrate of the Zillah of Cuddapah, 1809; Junior Secretary to Government, 1812; Chief Secretary, 1813; retired 1824. Strachey was Southey’s ‘substance’ (an older boy assigned to induct a new pupil into school rules and rituals) at Westminster School.

George Taylor (1772–1851): Gentleman farmer, classicist and occasional contributor to the Quarterly Review. Taylor lived in County Durham and became acquainted with Southey through the latter’s brother, Tom. His son, Henry Taylor, later became a close friend of Southey’s and his literary executor.