English clergyman and likely playwright of Grammer Gurton's Needle, a play of disputed authorship from the beginnings of English comedy.

Sterne's two most important novels, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1760-67) and The Sentimental Journey (1768), mark him as a major figure in the history of both sentimental and experimental fiction.

English Shakespearean commentator best remembered for his collaboration with Samuel Johnson on a 10-volume publication of the complete plays of William Shakespeare. Steevens later produced a 15-volume revision of the work, altering and adding material seemingly for the purpose of proving his superiority to fellow Shakespearian scholar Edmond Malone. Steevens also exposed the poetic forgeries of Thomas Chatterton.

Poet, dramatist, and satirist, Irish writer Sir Richard Steele is best remembered for his collaboration with Joseph Addison and Jonathan Swift in essay periodicals such as the Spectator, the Tatler, and the Guardian, many of which he penned, as did Addison and especially Swift, under the pseudonym "Isaac Bickerstaff."

1st century CE Roman poet, author of Thebaid, which recounts the struggle between Oedipus's sons for control of Thebes.

The third Duke of Buckingham, Edward Stafford was a first cousin once removed of King Henry VIII. Stafford held immense political power during the reign of Henry VIII, until he was accused, likely falsely, of plotting to kill the king and thus beheaded a month later.

Staël's Delphine (1803) was popular among British women, but her Corinne, ou l'Italie (1807) exerted a crucial influence on Romantic women's conceptions of the female artist. Her career as a critic, literary philosopher, and analyst of national character began with Lettres sur les ouvrages et le caractère de J.-J. Rousseau (1788), translated as Letters on the Works and Character of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1789).

Born de Launay, she became lady-in-waiting to the Duchesse du Maine. Implicated in a plot against the Duke of Orléans, she spent two years in the Bastille. Her memoirs are entitled Mémoires de Madame de Staal de Launay (1755).

German physician and prominent phrenologist.

Amsterdam-born rationalist philosopher whose arguments against the immortality of the soul and the possibility of a transcendent God resulted in his excommunication.