Dyson was not only Mark Akenside's friend and literary patron, but he supported Akenside's medical practice as well. As Akenside's literary executor, Dyson edited a collection of Akenside's poetry published as The Poems of Mark Akenside, M.D. (1772).

Biographer, historian, theologian, poet, and critic, Dyer was known for his congeniality despite his personal eccentricities. His poetry appeared in Poems (1792), The Poet's Fate (1797), Poems (1801), and Poems and Critical Essays (1802). Poetics, or a Series of Poems and Disquisitions on Poetry (1812) defends his poetic method, which some of his contemporaries had criticized as misguided.

Poet and playwright. Between 1757 and 1759, he and his son, clergyman and writer John Duncombe, published The Works of Horace in English Verse.

née Highmore; an artist in her own right, she was daughter to painter Joseph Highmore and his wife, also Susanna.

Author of The Feminead; or Female Genius (1757) and, with his father William Duncombe, The Works of Horace in English Verse (1757-9), John Duncombe married Susanna Highmore, daughter of Joseph and Susanna Highmore.

French painter, poet, and writer on art, best known for his De arte graphica (1668), a Latin poem which influenced centuries of aesthetic discourse.

One of eighteenth-century France's most significant women intellectuals, Mme. du Châtelet was also notable for her facility with languages, her athletic ability, her success at gambling, and her deep intellectual and emotional relationship with Voltaire, who left Paris with her when threatened with prosecution for his Lettres Philosophiques (1734) and with whom Mme. du Châtelet openly carried on an affair of several years duration.

Born Jeanne Bécu, Du Barry was a courtesan in French aristocratic circles who became the last maîtresse-en-titre, or official mistress, of King Louis XV. She was beheaded during the Reign of Terror in 1793.

Poet laureate of England from 1668 until his death. Particularly productive as a playwright, Dryden also ventured into a wide range of other genres, including satires, lyric poetry, essays, and literary criticism. His best-known dramatic works include an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest (1667, pub. 1670) and two other plays, Marriage A la Mode (1671; pub. 1673) and All for Love (1677, pub. 1678).

English politician, member of the House of Commons, and founder of Canons Ashby House, Northamptonshire. Sir Erasmus Dryden was the grandfather of poet John Dryden, as well as a distant relative of Jonathan Swift and Anne Hutchison.