A satirical poet and eventually preceptor to James I of England (James VI of Scotland), Buchanan spent seven months of his life imprisoned in a Portuguese monastery for his advocacy of Lutheranism. An incident from Buchanan's Rerum Scoticarvm Historia, published posthumously in 1582, was the inspiration for Tobias Smollett's unsuccessful play The Regicide (1749). ,

A wealthy Scottish peeress, Anne Scott was 1st Duchess of Buccleuch and Duchess of Monmouth through her marriage to James Scott.

Poet, courtier, favorite of Henry VIII, and friend of Sir Thomas Wyatt.

A notable orator and high-ranking Roman politician, Brutus became a leader in the successful assassination plot against Julius Caesar after Caesar declared his divinity and named himself permanent dictator.

French Jesuit historian, classicist, and man of letters. His analyses of Greek dramas in Le Théâtre des Grecs (1730) were especially esteemed.

A Scottish explorer who discovered the source of the Blue Nile in 1770. His five volume Travels to Discover the Sources of the Nile, in the Years 1768–73 was published in 1790.

As one of the most accomplished poets of nineteenth-century Britain, Elizabeth Barrett was proposed as a possible successor to William Wordsworth as poet laureate. Barrett enjoyed a physically active and intellectually vigorous childhood.

An English pastoral poet with an acute eye for nature, known for his long poem Britannia's Pastorals, two parts published in 1613 and 1616, with a third unfinished part printed posthumously in 1832 (1613-16). Two of his poems appeared as well in The Shepheard's Pipe, a collection of ecologues by various authors.

John Brown was an English priest, playwright, and essayist. One of his notable plays is Barbarossa (1754), a tragedy about the notorious 15th and 16th century pirate Anuj Barbarossa.

As the first professional American author, Brown was known for his Gothic novels, especially Wieland (1798), Arthur Mervyn (1799), Ormond (1799), Edgar Huntly (1799), and Memoirs of Carwin, the Biloquist (1803–1805). Brown edited or operated a number of periodicals during his life, including the Monthly Magazine, and American Review (1799-1800), renamed the American Review, and Literary Journal (1801-1802); the Literary Magazine, and American Register (1803-1807); and the American Register, or General Repository of History, Politics, and Science (1807-1809).