Robert Gooch (1784–1830): Obstetric physician from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. He became a close friend of Henry Herbert Southey when they both studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and also knew William Taylor. Gooch graduated MD in 1807 and became, as Henry also did, a contributor to the journal the London Medical Record. In 1811–1812 Gooch set up a successful medical practice in London, and published important works on puerperal fever. Gooch met Southey on a tour of the Lakes in 1811 and the two began a lifelong correspondence.

William Gonne (d.1815): Wealthy merchant, based in Portugal. He first met Southey in 1800, when he was the packet agent at Lisbon. In 1815 his daughter Louisa married Henry Herbert Southey.

William Godwin (1756–1836): Philosopher, journalist and novelist. Godwin was born in Wisbech and grew up in a middle class and fiercely Nonconformist household. He was educated at Hoxton Academy and was a Congregationalist Minister in Suffolk 1778–1782, before resigning his post and moving to London to try and make a living from literary work. His views became increasingly radical, and he embraced atheism and philosophical anarchism.

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.

William Gilbert (1763–1824): Poet and astrologer. Born in Antigua, son of Nathaniel Gilbert, speaker of the Antiguan House of Assembly. In 1788 he came to England to work as a lawyer, but suffered a mental collapse and was placed in an asylum run by Richard Henderson (1736/7–1792) at Hanham near Bristol. (In an earlier career as a schoolmaster, Henderson had numbered Joseph Cottle among his pupils.) Gilbert was released after a year and went to London, where he worked as an astrologer and maker of magic talismans.

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.

John Gibson (c. 1794–1860): Tea dealer, based in the port of Whitehaven, Cumbria, where he was deputy postmaster 1837–1860. He was a keen collector of autographs, books and prints and corresponded with Southey in the 1820s.

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.

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.

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.