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.

Martha Fricker (1777–1850): Southey’s sister-in-law. She never married and spent her final years on the Isle of Man, with her sister Eliza.

Robert Pearse Gillies (1788–1858): Born in Forfarshire, the son of a small landowner. After losing most of his fortune, he settled in Edinburgh in 1815 and pursued a literary career. Gillies became an expert on German literature, publishing many translations in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, and was a close friend of Walter Scott. At Scott’s suggestion, he persuaded Messrs Truettel and Wurtz to set up the Foreign Quarterly Review in 1827, with Gillies as editor; Southey contributed to the first issue.

Richard Garnett (1789–1850): Philologist, clergyman, author and librarian, born at Otley, Yorkshire, the son of a paper manufacturer. His early extraordinary facility with languages convinced him he had no wish to enter his father’s business and he became a schoolmaster in 1811, before being ordained in 1813. Garnett was curate of Blackburn and assistant-master of the grammar school 1818–1826, then held a number of other preferments until he became assistant keeper of printed books at the British Museum in 1838.

William Gifford (1756–1826): Long known to Southey as a Tory critic and editor of the Anti-Jacobin, Gifford became the first editor in 1809 of a new conservative journal begun on Southey’s advice – the Quarterly Review. Gifford then approached Southey through their mutual friend Grosvenor Charles Bedford to be a contributor. Gifford continued as editor until 1824, frequently the target of Southey’s ire over the cuts and interpolations he made to Southey’s contributions.

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.

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).

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.

Edward Everett (1794–1865): American polymath and politician. Everett was appointed to a newly endowed Chair in Greek at Harvard in 1815. This permitted him to study and travel in Europe, which he did between 1815–1819, enrolling for part of this time at Göttingen University alongside his friend George Ticknor. In summer 1818 Everett visited the Lakes and called on Southey. The latter described him as ‘one of the most interesting men I have seen’. Everett returned to America in 1819 and became editor of the North American Review in the following year.

Edith Fricker (1774–1837): Southey’s first wife. The third surviving child of Stephen Fricker and Martha Rowles. Southey and Edith met as children in Bristol. They married in secret on 14 November 1795 at St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol. As her sister Sarah later explained, Southey ‘left ... [Edith] at the Church door’ and the following day departed for Spain and Portugal. Edith spent the early days of her marriage living with the Cottle sisters and using her maiden name, only reverting to ‘Southey’ when the secret became public in early 1796.