James White (1787–1885): Younger brother of Henry Kirke and (John) Neville White. He attended Pembroke College, Cambridge, graduating in 1815; Southey sent him some encouraging letters when White was disappointed by his academic performance. White never married and became a clergyman. Initially, he held difficult curacies in industrial parishes in West Bromwich and then St George’s, Manchester (1826–42) – Southey helped him acquire the latter post.

Henry Kirke White (1785–1806): The son of a butcher in Nottingham, White was a studious boy who, after being articled to a lawyer, learned classical languages and, with help from Capel Lofft (1753–1824 ; DNB), patron of Robert Bloomfield, published Clifton Grove, a Sketch in Verse, with other Poems in 1803. The book was violently attacked in the Monthly Review (February 1804); Southey then wrote to White offering encouragement.

William Westall (1781–1850): Painter and engraver, whose works played an important role in the shaping of Romantic ideas of the landscape. He was the half brother of the academician Richard Westall (1765–1836; DNB). In 1801 he was appointed as the landscape draughtsman for the voyage to New Holland and the South Seas commanded by Matthew Flinders. His travels eventually also took him to Canton and Bombay. He arrived back in England in 1805 and was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society later that year. He held exhibitions of his foreign views in 1808 and 1809.

Benjamin West (1738–1820): Painter. Born in Pennsylvania, the son of an innkeeper, West travelled to Italy in 1760 and England in 1763, remaining there for the rest of his life. Although he worked in a number of genres, West became best known, first, as a history painter and, later in his career, as a painter of religious subjects. His works included, Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus (1768) and The Departure of Regulus from Rome (1769), the latter commissioned by George III.

Shadrach Weeks [also spelled ‘Weekes’] (dates unknown): Childhood friend of Southey. A servant of Elizabeth Tyler, Southey’s aunt, and a recruit to Pantisocracy.

Thomas Wedgwood (1771–1805): Chemist. Third son of the potter Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795; DNB). He inherited a substantial fortune of the death of his father and dedicated this to supporting writers and scientists. He was a patron of Beddoes’ Pneumatic Medical Institution and of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He participated in Davy’s Bristol experiments with nitrous oxide and later attended his lectures at the Royal Institution.

William Webb (c. 1771–1845): Deputy Commissary-General in the British Army. Webb had written to Southey in 1817 to defend the quality of the horses sent out to Portugal in 1808 to pull the British Army’s artillery and Southey had included Webb’s defence at History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (London, 1823–1832), I, pp. 554–555. The poor quality of the artillery horses was one of the reasons given for British forces not advancing after their victory in the Battle of Vimeiro (1808). In 1824 he solicited Southey’s advice on finding a publisher.

Alaric Alexander Watts (1797–1864): Journalist and poet. Born in London, he was the youngest son of John Mosley Watts and his wife Sarah. His parents separated when he was very young and a lengthy suit in Chancery followed. He was educated at Wye College Grammar School, Kent, and then at a school in Ashford. After that he held a variety of posts, including usher, private tutor, clerk and assistant teacher. By the late 1810s he was determined on a literary career and from January to June 1819 edited the New Monthly Magazine.

Elijah Waring (c. 1788–1857): Writer. Born in Alton, Hampshire, he was the son of Jeremiah Waring. He moved to Wales in c. 1810, living in Swansea and then Neath. He established the short-lived English-language periodical The Cambrian Visitor: A Monthly Miscellany in 1813. In 1817 he married Deborah (c. 1786–1867), sister of the prominent Quaker ironmaster and philanthropist Joseph Tregelles Price (1784–1854; DNB). Waring himself later abandoned Quakerism and joined the Wesleyan Methodists.

John Ware (1754–1820): Founding owner, printer and editor of the Cumberland Pacquet and Ware’s Whitehaven Advertiser 1774–1820. Southey sent the newspaper a letter in 1819 in protest at Henry Brougham’s campaign against the government’s support of the Manchester magistrates over their actions in the ‘Peterloo Massacre’ of 1819.