Mary Fricker (1771–1862): Southey’s sister-in-law. The second surviving child of Stephen Fricker and Martha Rowles. In the early 1790s she worked as an actress in Bath and Bristol theatres. She married Robert Lovell in January 1794, in spite of the disapproval of his family. Their son, also called Robert, was born in 1795. After Lovell’s death in 1796, Southey tried to persuade his family to provide for his widow and child. He was only partially successful.

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.

Charles Danvers (c. 1764-1814): Bristol wine merchant, trading under the name Danvers and White. He was distantly related to the regicides Sir John Danvers (1584/5–1655; DNB) and General Thomas Harrison (c. 1616–60; DNB) and to the diarist Celia Fiennes (1662–1741; DNB). (Southey possessed a manuscript of Fiennes diary which he had been given by the Danvers family and included unacknowledged excerpts from it in his and Coleridge’s Omniana (1812).) Danvers’ father had ‘been a person of some property’, though the family’s fortunes had since declined.

Alexander Robert Charles Dallas (1791-1869): The son of the barrister and man of letters Robert Charles Dallas (1754–1824; DNB). In later life he became an evangelical Church of England clergyman and organiser of the Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics. As a young man he had served as an army officer during the Peninsular War and at Waterloo, and had composed literary and musical pieces about the Peninsular campaign.

Humphry Davy (1778-1829): Born in Penzance, son of Robert Davy, a woodcarver. Educated at Penzance and Truro grammar schools and apprenticed to an apothecary-surgeon in Truro. Davy had wide interests as a young man, writing poetry as well as conducting chemical experiments on the nature of heat, light and acidity. In October 1798 he went to Bristol to work for Thomas Beddoes at his Pneumatic Institution, which opened in March 1799. Davy soon became friendly with Southey and Coleridge, and they both participated in his experiments with nitrous oxide, or ‘laughing gas’.

George Dyer (1755–1841): Author and advocate of political reform. Son of John Dyer, a shipwright of Bridewell, London. Educated at Christ’s Hospital and Emmanuel College, Cambridge (BA 1778). From the late 1780s to mid-1790s he was active in reformist causes, a member of the Constitutional Society and author of An Inquiry into the Nature of Subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles (1789, 2nd revised edn 1792), Complaints of the Poor People of England (1793) and A Dissertation on the Theory and Practice of Benevolence (1795).

Richard Duppa (c. 1768–1831): Writer (mainly on botany, art, literature and politics) and draughtsman. Son of William and Susannah Duppa. Educated (late in life) at Trinity College, Oxford (matric. 1807); entered Middle Temple 1810; graduated LLB Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1814.

James Dusautoy (c. 1797–1815): Son of a retired officer from Totnes, Devon. He cherished ambitions for a poetic career. As a schoolboy in 1811 he canvassed Walter Scott’s advice and was politely encouraged to improve his writing by gaining more knowledge. In 1813 Dusautoy sent some of his verses to Southey. The latter replied and a correspondence about Dusautoy’s career ensued. He took Southey’s advice and was admitted to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1813. In 1814 he entered an ode, in Spenserian stanzas, for a university prize in English poetry.

Hew Whitefoord Dalrymple, 1st Baronet (1750–1830): Army officer. In summer 1808, as commander of the British forces in Portugal, he was responsible for agreeing to the highly controversial Convention of Cintra, by which the French army, its arms and spoils were repatriated in British ships. Dalrymple was recalled to England shortly afterwards and appeared before a government-appointed board of inquiry, which determined that he be exonerated of all blame. Although he was subsequently promoted, reaching the rank of General in 1812, he never received another command.

John Edmondson (d. 1823): A surgeon and apothecary in Keswick, who treated the Southey family.