Priestley, Joseph, 1733-1804

Unitarian minister Joseph Priestley was a well known radical philosopher, theologian, historian, scientist, and reform writer. An important member of the Dissenting circle that frequented Joseph Johnson's publishing establishment, he was also a particularly close friend of Anna Letitia Barbauld. During the 1791 "church and king" riots in Birmingham, Priestley's home and laboratory were destroyed by the mob, and in 1794 he emigrated to America.

Pope, Alexander, 1688-1744

Pope was so significant to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers who followed him that an exhaustive catalog of his work is far beyond the scope of a brief note. Among the most important are An Essay On Criticism (1711); Windsor-Forest (1713); The Rape of the Lock (1714); Eloisa to Abelard (1719); The Dunciad (1728); Of False Taste (1732); An Essay On Man (1733-1734); An Epistle From Mr. Pope, To Dr. Arbuthnot (1735); Of The Characters of Women: An Epistle To A Lady (1735); a series of Horatian satires; and a sequence of pastoral poems.