An important translator, biographer, travel writer, and critic as well as poet laureate from 1813, Southey enjoyed his most enthusiastic audience for his romantic verse tales such as Thalaba the Destroyer (1801), Madoc (1805), Metrical Tales, and Other Poems (1805), and The Curse of Kehama (1810). His early drama, The Fall of Robespierre (1794), was authored in collaboration with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Some of his other more important works include the epic Joan of Arc (1796), Roderick, the Last of the Goths (1814), Wat Tyler (1817), and A Vision of Judgement (1821).

Poet Caroline Bowles contributed to gift annuals and periodicals and published several books of verse, prose tales, and essays. She began her career with Ellen Fitzarthur: A Metrical Tale (1820), which she sent to poet laureate Robert Southey, whom she did not at the time know. Southey was impressed with the work and assisted her with revisions and locating a publisher, beginning what proved to be a long and close friendship.

Irish dramatist Thomas Southerne adapted his best-known play Oroonoko (1695) from the 1688 novel, Oroonoko; Or, The Royal Slave, by Aphra Behn (1640-1689). Many of his other plays are adaptations as well, including both Sir Anthony Love, or, The Rambling Lady (1690), adapted from the Aphra Behn novel The Lucky Mistake (1689), and The Fatal Marriage, sometimes referred to as Isabella after the title character, taken from Behn's work The History of the Nun (1689). The Wives' Excuse, or, Cukolds Make Themselves (1691) depicts the plight of a woman trapped in a bad marriage.

The greatest of the Greek tragedians from the golden age of Athens, Sophocles is believed to have authored over 120 plays, only seven of which have survived in their entirety. Those include Antigone, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus, Women of Trachis, Ajax, Oedipus Rex, and Electra.

Greek statesman and poet whose reform-oriented writings are known mostly through quotation by later Greek historians.

Greek philosopher whose teachings caused him to be condemned to death.

A versatile author who produced satire, history, drama, poetry, polemical pamphlets, and journalism, Smollett is best known for his picaresque novels such as The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748, modeled after Lesage's Gil Blas, which Smollett translated), The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751), The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753), and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771). At the age of eighteen, he authored his first play, The Regicide (1749). His literary journalism was important as well.

The grandfather of Tobias Smollett. He sat on a variety of parliamentary commissions and committees; however, his most important position was the commissioner for union with England, first in August 1702, and more successfully in February 1706. He helped frame the articles of the union, and in 1707 was the elected member for Dunbartonshire to the first parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. His manuscript Memorials of Certain Passages of the Lord's Signal Mercies provide his comments on the affairs of the time.

This James Smollett was grandson of Sir James Smollett, grandfather also to Tobias Smollett, and was therefore Tobias Smollett's cousin. On the death of his grandfather, Sir James, James Smollett inherited the grandfather's Bonhill estate.

The second son of Sir James Smollett and uncle to Tobias Smollett.