John Ballantyne (1774-1821): The younger brother of James, and a partner in the publishing firm with him and Scott.

Arthur Aikin (1773-1854): Son of John Aikin and nephew of Anna Letitia Barbauld. A Unitarian intellectual, writer and lecturer on chemistry and mineralogy and from 1803–1808 the editor of the Annual Review, the journal for which Southey wrote before he became a regular contributor to the Quarterly Review.

Joanna Baillie (1762-1851): Scottish poet and dramatist, best-known for A Series of Plays: In which it is Attempted to Delineate the Stronger Passions of the Mind (1798¬–1812), which Southey greatly admired. Baillie’s first plays and poems were published anonymously in 1790, and her authorship was not revealed until 1800. Her father, James Baillie (c.

Robert Allen (1772-1805): Surgeon and journalist. Educated at Christ’s Hospital (where he was a contemporary of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb) and University College, Oxford (BA 1796, MA 1803, MB and MD 1803). He first met Southey, who was flirting with a career in medicine, at the Anatomy School in Oxford in early 1794. They became firm friends, Southey later describing how in 1794 Allen had been his ‘bosom-companion’ and had ‘rendered many hours delightful which would otherwise have passed in the destructive daydreams of solitude’.

James Ballantyne (1772-1833): Printer and schoolfriend of Walter Scott. He printed Southey’s Madoc (1805) and many of his subsequent poems. Ballantyne’s printing business, in which Scott had a secret share, became one of the most highly regarded and profitable of the first decade of the nineteenth century. In 1809 Southey agreed to provide historical material for the Edinburgh Annual Register, issued by the related publishing firm in which Ballantyne, Scott and Ballantyne’s younger brother John were partners.

Anna Letitia Barbauld (née Aikin; 1743-1825): Poet, essayist and children’s author, sister of John Aikin and aunt of Arthur Aikin, Southey’s editor at the Annual Review. She married the Revd Rochemont Barbauld (1749–1808) on 26 May 1774. Barbauld and Southey met in 1797 and had many acquaintances in common, including George Dyer, William Godwin and Joseph Johnson. Barbauld was publicly linked with the literary and scientific experimentalism of Southey’s circle, and featured in the Anti-Jacobin satire ‘The Pneumatic Revellers’ (1800).