Noted as a philosopher and historian, Hume was among those who exerted the most powerful and lasting influences on eighteenth-century thought. His best-known publications include A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Essays, Moral and Political (1741), Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding (1748), An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, 4 volumes (1753), and The History of Great Britain (1754-1762).

English author, dramatist, actor, theatre manager, and friend of William Shenstone.

Playwright, poet, librettist, historian, translator, editor, and critic; Hughes's plays include Amalasont, Queen of the Goths (possibly c. 1697-1700), Calypso and Telemachus (1712), Apollo and Daphne (1716), and The Siege of Damascus (1720).

Scholar, skeptical philosopher, and bishop of Avranches.

Character in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1747-9).

A highly respected Dissenting hospital and prison reformer.

English dramatist, Royalist during the English Civil War, and brother-in-law of John Dryden. Howard's most famous adaptation was his 1662 staging of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, in which both characters survive. His two original plays are All Mistaken (1667) and The English Mounsieur (1666).

English nobleman, politician, translator, and poet. Alongside Sir Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard introduced the conventions of Italian humanist poetry into English literature.

Irish miscellany writer, architect, and playwright, best remembered for his The Female Gamester (1778).

English peer, son of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Berkshire, and brother-in-law of John Dryden.