Jonathan Boucher (1738-1804): Schoolmaster, clergyman and lexicographer. Southey corresponded with him in 1802 concerning Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770; DNB).

Robert Bloomfield (1766-1823): Brought up in Suffolk as a farmhand, Bloomfield became a shoemaker in London. His Georgic poem The Farmer’s Boy (1800) sold over 25,000 copies, and later collections Rural Tales (1802) and Wild Flowers (1806) also sold by the thousands. After 1813, owing to the bankruptcy of his publisher, Bloomfield was afflicted by poverty; Southey advised on schemes to raise money for his benefit. Bloomfield and Southey briefly corresponded in 1817.

Charles James Blomfeld (1786-1857): Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Greek scholar and clergyman. He was later Bishop of Chester, 1824–1828, and Bishop of London, 1828–1856. Southey met Blomfield in 1825 and the two men corresponded briefly.

Robert Blakeney (1758-1822): Secretary and Treasurer to the Whitehaven Harbour Trustees. He was well known to Wordsworth through the latter’s work as Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland.

William Blackwood (1776-1834): Edinburgh-based publisher whose firm, William Blackwood and Sons, became the leading Scottish publisher of the 1820s and 1830s. Blackwood’s career started in the antiquarian bookselling business, but gradually moved into publishing. His appointment, in 1811, as Edinburgh agent for John Murray gave him excellent links to the English book trade and English authors. In 1817 he founded a new Tory periodical – the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine.

Robert Bill (c. 1790–1823): The elder son of John Bill (d. 1847), a surgeon to the Manchester Infirmary who inherited the Farley estate, near Alton, Staffordshire. Robert Bill was educated at Macclesfield School (now the King’s School, Macclesfield), whose headmaster was Dr David Davies (1755–1828). Bill matriculated at Oriel College, Oxford, in 1807 graduating BA 1810 and MA 1814. He pursued a career as a barrister. In 1820 he married Louisa Dauncey, the daughter of Philip Dauncey K.C. (d.

Willem Bilderdijk (1756-1831): Dutch lawyer, poet, teacher, arch-conservative and a central figure in the intellectual life of the Netherlands in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. He greatly admired Southey’s poetry and his second wife, Katharina Schweickhardt (1776–1830), translated Roderick, the Last of the Goths (1814) into Dutch in 1823–1824. When Southey visited the Netherlands in 1825 he was taken ill and the Bilderdijks nursed him at their home in Leiden.

Nathaniel Biggs (d. 1832): Printer and stationer in Bristol. He printed books, including works by Beddoes, Coleridge, Estlin and Southey, for congeries of publishers in London and the South-West of England. In the mid-late 1790s, he entered into a business partnership with Joseph Cottle, printing the Bristol edition of Coleridge and Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads (1798), and the revised editions of 1800 and 1802.

Charles Biddlecombe (dates unknown): Neighbour and friend. Biddlecombe met Southey in summer 1797 when the latter moved to the village of Burton in Hampshire. Southey described him as ‘rich enough to buy books, and very friendly, all that a neighbour should be’. Biddlecombe married in 1798, but his wife died in childbirth in March 1799, leaving him with an infant daughter.

John Laurens Bicknell (c. 1786-1845): Solicitor, author, Fellow of the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries. He was the son of John Bicknell (1746–1787), a barrister, and his wife Sabrina (1756/7–1843; DNB). Bicknell’s father was an associate of Thomas Day (1748–1789; DNB), with whom he co-wrote The Dying Negro (1773). Sabrina Bicknell’s association with Day was rather different. She was the subject of his failed attempt to educate a wife by applying the theories of Rousseau.