• Name: Ayrton, William
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date: 24  February  1777
• Death Date: 8  May  1858
• Occupation: impresario
• Occupation: writer

Ayrton became manager of Italian opera at the King's Theatre, Haymarket in 1817. He also wrote criticism for the Morning Chronicle and The Examiner and edited The Harmonicon. Godwin and he were particularly intimate between 1822 and 1824.

The identification of William Ayrton seems solid. There is a letter from William Ayrton to Godwin dated 7 June 1824 in the Pforzheimer collection and the diary records Godwin writing to Ayrton, presumably in response, on 14 June. There are also a host of references to Ayrton in Lucas's The Life of Charles Lamb including a reference to William Ayrton's £10 contribution to a subscription to Godwin in 1823 (II, p. 611) and also an extended anecdote of a literary discussion involving Lamb, Hazlitt, Ayrton, James Burney, and Godwin, among others (I, pp. 467-77). Lucas dates this at around 1814 and Godwin's diary indicates gatherings of this circle that he was present at in 1815, 1818, and 1819. Ayrton and Godwin are also connected in Crabb Robinson's diary.

A Mrs Ayrton and a Miss Ayrton who appears in the 1830s have not been coded. Ayrton did marry in 1803 and they had at least one son. However, Ayrton himself was one of fourteen children, Miss Ayrton may be a sister.

• MS. Abinger c. 38, fol. 28: 8 July 1823
• MS. Abinger c. 18, fol. 104: 23 September 1823
• DNB
• E.V. Lucas, The Life of Charles Lamb, 2 vols (1905, 7th edn. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1921)
• The Diary of Henry Crabb Robinson, ed. by Edith J. Morley, 3 vols (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1938)

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