Richard Malone, Lord Sunderlin (1738–1816): Elder brother of the Shakespeare critic, Edmond Malone (1741–1812; DNB). Sunderlin was an Irish politician, barrister and landowner, who received his title in 1785. Southey got to know Sunderlin and his family well when they visited the Lakes in 1812–1813.
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.
Henry Taylor (1800–1886): Poet and civil servant. The son of the gentleman farmer and classicist George Taylor. Southey became acquainted with the Taylors in the early 1810s via his brother Tom, who lived near them in County Durham. Taylor joined the Colonial Office in 1824, eventually rising to be senior clerk for the Carribean colonies. He married Theodosia (1818–1891), daughter of the politican Thomas Spring Rice in 1839. Taylor was a successful civil servant, knighted for his service to the Colonial Office in 1869. He managed to combine his job with a literary career.
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.
Isabel Southey (1812–1826): Southey’s youngest daughter.
John Cannon Southey (1743–1806): The eldest brother of Southey’s father, who lived at Taunton, Somerset. His work as a lawyer led to him accumulating a substantial fortune of £100,000. Although he was unmarried, he refused to help either Robert Southey Senior, thus ensuring the latter’s imprisonment for debt in 1792, or his nephews, to whom he left nothing in his Will. Southey visited his uncle in 1802, describing his miserly existence to John May. In 1806, he recorded that his uncle ‘had thanked God upon his death bed that he had cut me off’.
Katharine (‘Kate’) Southey (1810–1864): Sixth child of Robert and Edith Southey. She did not marry and in her later years lived at Lairthwaite Cottage in Keswick with her aunt, Mary Lovell.
Louisa Southey (née Gonne; d. 1830): Daughter of Southey’s old Lisbon friends, the Gonnes, and second wife of Henry Herbert Southey. They married on 21 August 1815. Louisa died giving birth to their tenth child.
Margaret Southey (1752–1802): Southey’s mother. Born Margaret Hill, she married Robert Southey Senior in 1772. The marriage produced nine children, of whom five died young. She was dominated by her older half-sister, Elizabeth Tyler, with whom Southey spent a great deal of his childhood. After the bankruptcy and death of her husband in 1792, Margaret moved to Bath, running a boarding house in Westgate Buildings. Her continued financial difficulties — possibly exacerbated by the extravagance of her half-sister — caused Southey great anxiety.
Margaret Southey (b. 1811): Eldest child of Tom Southey and his wife Sarah. Born 7 March 1811.
