Emma Southey (1808–1809): Southey’s third daughter.

Eliza Southey (1776–1779): Southey’s younger sister.

Edward Southey (1788–1847): Southey’s youngest brother, he spent much of his childhood in the household of Elizabeth Tyler. Southey was much preoccupied with arranging Edward’s education, though plans to send him to St Paul’s School did not work out. It is not certain where he was educated. Southey despaired, noting ‘I never saw a lad with a better capacity or with habits more compleatly bad’. Edward was to lead an increasingly rackety, disreputable life, trying his hand at being a sailor, soldier and, eventually, a provincial actor.

Edith May Southey (1804–1871): Southey’s oldest surviving child. She was a close friend of both her cousin, Sara Coleridge (1802–1852) and of Dora Wordsworth (1804–1847), who were of a similar age. Edith May was educated at Greta Hall by her father and aunts, Sarah Coleridge and Mary Lovell. She was a talented linguist – she learned Danish, for instance, alongside Southey - but was also practically-minded and as a young adult took an important role in organising the household and social events at Greta Hall.

See Fricker, Edith (1774–1837)

Charles Cuthbert Southey (1819–1888): The last, unexpected, child of Robert and Edith Southey, and their only surviving son, he was always known as ‘Cuthbert’ to his family. He was born on 24 February 1819 and was indulged by his parents and older sisters. He was mainly educated at home. In 1836–1837 he accompanied his father on a lengthy trip to the West Country, and, in 1838, was one of the party on Southey’s final foreign journey, to France.

Bertha Southey (1809–1877): Fifth child of Robert and Edith Southey. She was educated at Greta Hall by her father and her aunts, Sarah Coleridge and Mary Lovell. Bertha was persistently described by Southey as the shyest of his children and spent a year in 1824–1825 and again in 1830–1831 with John Rickman and his family in order to meet a wider social circle. When her mother became ill in the mid-1830s Bertha shared Edith Southey’s care with her sister, Kate.

Joanna Southcott (1750–1814): A Devon maidservant and upholsterer who in 1801 began to publish accounts of the prophetic visions she had been experiencing since 1792. Although the Devon clergy proved uninterested in her experiences, her publication The Strange Effects of Faith; with Remarkable Prophecies (Made in 1792) (1801–2) brought her to the attention of followers of Richard Brothers, including Southey’s acquaintance William Sharp.

William Sotheby (1757–1833): Poet and translator. Born into a wealthy family, Sotheby served in the army before devoting himself to literature in 1780. He had many close friends in the literary world, including Joanna Baillie, and unobtrusively helped a number of authors who were in financial trouble. Sotheby’s poetry had little success and he was best known for his translation of Oberon (1798). Southey was first introduced to him in 1802, finding Sotheby ‘a man of taste & much original thought’, though he valued his criticism above his poetry.

William Smyth [also Smythe] (1765–1849): Historian and poet. Born in Liverpool, he was educated at Eton College and Peterhouse, Cambridge. His appointment as Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge in 1807 was controversial and attributed to patronage by the Holland House set. He wrote poetry – publishing English Lyrics in 1807 – and took an interest in contemporary poets, including Henry Kirke White, whom he knew during the latter’s time at university.