English poet, novelist, translator, salonnière, radical social critic, and proponent of such causes as the French Revolution and abolitionism. A first-hand witness to much of the French Revolution, Williams published her account of events in a series of letters beginning with Letters Written in France in the Summer of 1790 (1790), followed by four more volumes of Letters from France (1792-1796).
Character in Samuel Richardson's The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1754).
Known as William of Orange, this Protestant Dutch prince deposed his father-in-law James II and ascended to the British throne in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. His marriage to James's protestant daughter Mary helped legitimate his rule.
Known as "William the Conqueror," William I was the first Norman monarch of England, serving as Duke of Normandy before rising to the throne of England in 1066. Due to his illegitimacy as the son of a concubine, William faced massive challenge to his power. William came to rule England through the Battle of Hastings in 1066, in which his army of Normans defeated the Anglo-Saxon forces. As King of England, William struggled to secure and maintain his power in England and the continent.
Popular as an actor, Wilks was also one of the managers of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane during the early eighteenth century.
A Scottish painter, Wilkie is best known for his genre paintings.
A political leader and reformer, Wilkes was elected to parliament in 1757. He began to publish an anti-Tory weekly, the North Briton, in 1762.
Samuel Richardson's master during his apprenticeship from 1706-1713, and the father of Richardson's first wife, Martha. Wilde's son Allington remained Richardson's lifelong friend.
A character and the eponymous narrator of "The Wife of Bath's Tale." in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,
Geschichte des Agathon (1776-7, expanded in 1773 and 1794) is Wieland's fictionalized autobiography. Wieland's novel Geheime Geschichte des Philosophen Peregrinus Proteus (1791) examines fanaticism over scientific and philosophical developments.
