Thomas Poole (14 November 1766 – 8 September 1837) was a Somerset tanner, Radical philanthropist, and essayist, who used his wealth to improve the lives of the poor of Nether Stowey, his native village. He was a friend of several writers in the British Romantic movement, a benefactor of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his family, and an influence on the poems of Wordsworth.

Poole was born in 1766 in the village of Nether Stowey, Somerset, the son of a successful tanner and farmer. He was, against his own wishes, denied much formal education by his father, who instead apprenticed him to the family tanning business. In spite of his dislike for tanning he became a master of the trade, well thought of by his competitors, and in his spare time studied French, Latin and the humanities and social sciences.

In 1790, he went to London as delegate to a tanners' conference, and in 1791 was chosen by the conference to express their concerns to the Prime Minister, Pitt the Younger.

His London experiences did much to radicalize Poole, and he returned to Somerset a confirmed advocate of the cause of democracy, though he hoped to promote it by peaceful means rather than revolution. In 1793 he started a local reading club which spread the teachings of Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and the same year he toured the Midlands dressed as a workman to research the living and working conditions of the poor.

Within a few years he had attracted the hostile interest of the Home Office, who thought him a revolutionary agitator and are said to have rated him as the most dangerous person in the county.

Even his relatives were thoroughly exasperated with him: "I wish he would cease to torment us with his democratick sentiments", his cousin Charlotte complained after one argument, while another cousin, with whom he had fallen in love, refused to marry him on political grounds. In the event, he never married.

In August 1794 Poole was visited by two young men, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, whose political views bore some similarity to his own. Both were fired up by doctrines of their own devising which they called Pantisocracy and aspheterism, respectively involving government by the whole of society and common ownership of property by society. They planned to realize these ideals in a commune in Kentucky made up of some two dozen of their friends and relations, though the scene was later shifted first to the Susquehanna River and then to Wales. Poole sympathized with the political idealism of this scheme, though he was too practical a man to have much faith in its chances of succeeding. He was deeply impressed by Coleridge's personality and "splendid abilities", and thought Southey "a mere Boy" by comparison. On another visit by Coleridge in 1795 Poole was inspired to write a poem of his own in tribute to his friend.

In 1796, Poole wrote an article against the slave trade, which Coleridge published in his journal The Watchman, and when that journal failed he organized an annuity to be paid Coleridge by himself and a group of friends. At the end of that year, rather against his better judgement, he found a cottage in Nether Stowey for Coleridge, who now wanted to live a rustic life with his wife Sara and baby son Hartley. A gate was built to connect Coleridge's new garden with Poole's, and Coleridge became a frequent visitor, sometimes studying in Poole's book parlour and sometimes writing, as with his poem "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison", which was composed in Poole's garden.