Thomas Digges La Touche(1799–1853): Church of Ireland clergyman, from a prominent family of bankers and landowners of Huguenot descent. He was Rector of Killenaule, Co. Tipperary. He stayed in Keswick in 1827 with his wife and family and became very friendly with Southey and his family. He sent gifts on his return home, for which Southey wrote to thank him.

John Leyden (1746–1839): A farmer from the area around Hawick, Roxburghshire, and father of the linguist and poet, John Leyden (1775–1811; DNB). In 1826 Southey wrote to Leyden to thank him for a copy of the Memoirs of Zehir-ed-Din Muhammed Baber, Emperor of Hindustan, published earlier that year. This combined his late son’s unfinished translation from the Eastern Turkish original with one by William Erskine (1773–1852; DNB) from a Persian version of the text.

Samuel Le Grice (1775–1802): Soldier. The younger brother of Coleridge’s school fellow, Charles Valentine Le Grice (1773–1858). Educated at Christ’s Hospital, where he was a contemporary and friend of Charles Lamb, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He obtained an army commission and died in Jamaica.

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864): Writer and poet (in English and Latin) whose 1798 Gebir, Southey declared, contained ‘some of the most exquisite poetry in the language’. Landor inherited wealth in 1805 and in 1808 met Southey at Bristol, offering to pay for the publication of future poems that Southey might write. Thus encouraged, Southey completed The Curse of Kehama (1810), sending drafts to Landor, and Roderick the Last of the Goths (1814). In 1812 Landor himself published a blank verse tragedy on Spain, Count Julian, with Southey’s help.

John Prideaux Lightfoot (1803–1887): Eldest son of Southey’s schoolfriend from Westminster, Nicholas Lightfoot. He was a clergyman and long-serving Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, 1854–1887.

Robert Eyres Landor (1781–1869): Writer and clergyman. Youngest brother of Walter Savage Landor.

Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830): Portrait painter. The son of a Bristol innkeeper, he was self–taught and displayed his brilliant talents as a draughtsman from childhood. He established himself as a fashionable painter in 1790 with a portrait of Queen Charlotte (1744–1818; DNB) and was much patronised by royalty. He was knighted in 1815 and was elected President of the Royal Academy in 1820. Southey wrote to him that year in response to an invitation he had received to the Academy’s Annual Dinner. Sir Robert Peel later commissioned Lawrence to paint Southey’s portrait.

Christian Ignatius Latrobe (1758–1836): Moravian minister and composer – he was a friend of Joseph Haydn (1732–1809; DNB). Born into the Moravian community at Fulneck, Yorkshire, he was educated in Germany and returned to England in 1784. From 1787 to 1834 he was secretary to the Moravian Brethren’s Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel to the Heathen. In 1790 he initiated the influential Periodical Accounts of Moravian missions, and in 1795 became secretary of the international Moravian church in Britain.

Thomas Phillipps Lamb (?1752–1819): Politician. The father of Thomas Davis Lamb. He was married to Elizabeth Davis and lived at Mountsfield Lodge, near Rye. By the mid-eighteenth century the Lamb family had become the dominant force on Rye corporation and wielded great political influence in the borough. Lamb was the government agent in Rye and sat as an MP for the town 1812–1816 and 1819, though (like his son) he is not known to have spoken in the House of Commons. He was Mayor of Rye some 18 times between 1775–1817.

Joseph Lancaster (1778–1838): The educationalist whose monitorial system of teaching mirrored that of Southey’s friend Andrew Bell. Although a Quaker, and opposed to corporal punishment, Lancaster’s disciplinary methods, involving public humiliation and confinement, lost him Southey’s approval. Bell relentlessly promoted his own Anglican educational system over Lancaster’s, and Lancaster found greater success in the United States, Mexico and South America.