George IV (1762–1830): Prince Regent 1811–1820; King of the United Kingdom 1820–1830. Southey met him at a Court levee on 11 November 1813 following his installation as Poet Laureate and gave him what little praise he felt he could in one of his Congratulatory Odes (1814). George IV made only fleeting appearances in the rest of Southey’s Laureate verses and Southey did not commemorate either his Coronation or his death.

Sarah (Sara) Fricker (1770–1845): Southey’s sister-in-law. The eldest surviving child of Stephen Fricker and Martha Rowles. Sarah and Southey were childhood friends, and it was through her that Southey met Robert Lovell in late 1793. Southey may well have been romantically interested in Sarah, before he became engaged to her sister, Edith Fricker, in 1794. Sarah met Samuel Taylor Coleridge through Southey and the two married on 4 October 1795. They had three surviving children – Hartley, Derwent and Sara.

Fricker family: Stephen Fricker (1738–1786) and his second wife Martha Rowles (1750–1809) and their six surviving children: Sarah, Mary, Edith, Martha (b. 1777), Eliza (b. 1778) and George (b. 1785). The failure of his business speculations (including the manufacture of sugar pans) contributed to Stephen Fricker’s early death and to a sharp decline in the fortunes of his family.

Eliza Fricker (b. 1778): Southey’s sister-in-law. She never married and spent her final years on the Isle of Man, with her sister Martha.

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.

Benjamin Flower (1755–1829): Writer and publisher of the radical newspaper the Cambridge Intelligencer. In 1799, Flower was sentenced to six months imprisonment and a fine of £100 for a libel against Richard Watson, the Bishop of Llandaff.

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).

James Everett (1784–1872): Methodist Minister, bookseller, historian, polemicist and dissident. He was expelled from the main body of Methodists in 1849 and became a central figure in the United Methodist Free Church. He struck up a surprisingly amicable correspondence with Southey, prompted by the latter’s biographical sketch of John Wesley (1703–1791; DNB) in the Correspondent (1817).

Bartholomew Frere (1776–1851): Diplomat. The younger brother of John Hookham Frere, he attended Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1801 embarked on a diplomatic career. Frere was Secretary of Legation in the British Embassies to Portugal 1801–1802, Spain 1802–1805, 1808–1810 and Prussia 1805–1807. He then served as Secretary to the Embassy to the Ottoman Empire 1807–1808, 1811–1821, and it was in this capacity that Southey wrote to him, introducing Wade Browne (1796–1851), the son of his friend Wade Browne.

Henry Richard Fox, 3rd Lord Holland (1773–1840): Whig politician and Hispanophile; nephew of the Whig politician Charles James Fox. Lord Holland gave Southey access to his superb library of books and manuscripts relating to Spain, Portugal and their colonies. Southey used it to research his History of Brazil (1810–1819).