John Cannon Southey (1743–1806): The eldest brother of Southey’s father, who lived at Taunton, Somerset. His work as a lawyer led to him accumulating a substantial fortune of £100,000. Although he was unmarried, he refused to help either Robert Southey Senior, thus ensuring the latter’s imprisonment for debt in 1792, or his nephews, to whom he left nothing in his Will. Southey visited his uncle in 1802, describing his miserly existence to John May. In 1806, he recorded that his uncle ‘had thanked God upon his death bed that he had cut me off’.

Isabel Southey (1812–1826): Southey’s youngest daughter.

Herbert Southey (1806–1816): Southey’s first son, a boy of great intellectual promise.

Henry Herbert Southey (1784–1865): Physician. Southey’s younger brother. With the help of his uncle Herbert Hill, Southey provided money for Henry Herbert’s education at Norwich and Edinburgh. His concerns about his younger brother’s lack of application proved — eventually — to be ill-founded, and in later life the two enjoyed a close friendship. Henry graduated MD on 24 June 1806, producing, with Southey’s help, a dissertation on the origins and course of syphilis which suggested an American origin for the disease.

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.