• Name: Symonds, Henry Delahoy
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date:
• Death Date: 1816
• Occupation: publisher

According to J A Hone, Symonds was sentenced to four years in Newgate for publishing Paine's Rights of Man and Letter Addressed to the Addressers, as well as Pigott's Jockey Club. Godwin's record of contacts sit uncomfortably with this. On his dates see publishing archives for H Symonds, 20-12 Paternoster Row, between 1787 and 1808. Holcroft, who had some of his work published by Symonds, talks of calling on Symmonds of Paternoster Row 'to settle the accounts between us' in November 1798, and refers later that month to the time they spent together in Newgate. Goodwin also cites the evidence of PRO TS 11/944/3419 for Symonds' four year sentence. Tyson's biography of Joseph Johnson suggests that Symonds and Ridgeway were imprisoned for two years (rather than four) and cites support from State Trials. This is confirmed by the newspaper reports of the trial. For Example, Lloyd's Evening Register for 23 Febriary 1793 noted Symonds' prosecution for libel and the finding of guilt. It reported that the Attorney general 'did not wish to press any thing hard against the Defendant, nor to strain any point beyond its proper tension' and they accordingly suspended sentence pending Symonds' declaration of his pecuniary circumstances. In the Morning Herald for 26 February 1793, it was reported that Symonds received a two-year prison sentence, with a requirement that he give security for good behavior for three years after.

The entries after February 1793 include dinner at Tooke's (May 1793), and a call, 'Symonds, nah'. There is a dine with Symonds in Newgate in April 1794, but later entries for that year do not suggest Symonds is in jail. Moreover, Symonds attends the Treason Trials at the end of 1794.
This makes the identification of Symonds uncertain, unless we have evidence of an early release, or of special arrangements that gave Symonds freedom of movement. At the same time, it would be slightly surprising if H D Symonds did not appear in Godwin's diary given his involvement in the radical press and popular politics.

• Lloyd's Evening Register, 23 Febriary 1793.
• Morning Herald, 26 February 1793.
• British Book Trade Index.
• J. Ann Hone, For the Cause of Truth: Radicalism in London, 1796-1821 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 12.
• Gerald P. Tyson, Joseph Johnson: A Liberal Publisher (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1979).
• Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society 1792-99 ed. by Mary Thale, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
• Albert Goodwin, The friends of liberty: the English democratic movement in the age of the French Revolution (London: Hutchinson, 1979).

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.