English dramatist and author whose The Right, Excellent and Famous Historye of Promos and Cassandra (1578) inspired Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

Father to Philip, Duke of Wharton. After a rather colorful youth, Thomas Wharton rose to political influence in the Protestant regime installed through the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He became lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1688 and appointed Joseph Addison as his secretary.

Politically controversial and personally profligate politician who flaunted his Jacobite sympathies. He published the True Briton from 1723 to 1724 with Samuel Richardson as printer. Some believe that Wharton served as Richardson's model for the character Lovelace in Clarissa.

English clergyman, schoolmaster, antiquary, and editor. Whalley edited the work of such authors as Ben Jonson and John Bridges. His original works include An Essay on the Manner of Writing History, An Enquiry into the Learning of Shakespeare, and Vindication of the Evidences and Authenticity of the Gospels from the Objections of the late Lord Bolingbroke.

Founded in 1823 by Jeremy Bentham, the Westminster Review continued publication until 1914, becoming one of nineteenth-century Britain's great literary reviews.

Not a formally adopted daughter of Samuel Richardson, but a close correspondent. She married John Scudamore of Kentchurch, Herefordshire.

The works of novelist, poet, and conduct book author Jane West (1758-1832), including the novel A Gossip's Story (1796), tended toward conservative didacticism.

Jacobean dramatist and contemporary of Shakespeare. Webster's tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi are regarded as the principal plays of the seventeenth century, aside from those of Shakespeare.

Pseudonym of Leonhard Wächter. See Wächter.

Clergyman, theologian, and poet, Watts was interested in the application of Lockean theories of sensation to theological questions. His hymns, the genre for which he is best known, established the form for subsequent generations.