Saumaise, Claude, 1588-1653

French classical scholar known by Latin name "Claudius Salmasius." During the English Civil War, Salmasius published a defense of England's absolute monarchy. The popularity of this publication disturbed John Milton, who published his Defensio pro Populo Anglicano (Defence of the People of England) in response. Milton's publication included personal attacks of Salmasius and his wife.

Sappho

The Lesbos-born Greek lyric poet, probably from the mid-seventh century B.C.E., widely viewed as the mother of all female poetic tradition, was especially noted for love poems to the boatman Phaon.

Sand, George, 1804-1876

The pseudonym of nineteenth-century French author and feminist, Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, baronne Dudevant. Sand was a prolific and immensely popular writer of fiction, drama, travel accounts, and correspondence as well as autobiographical work. A political writer during the French Revolution of 1848, she was critical of the Napoleonic Code for its inequitable treatment of women. Unhappy in her marriage, she separated from her husband and pursued an unconventional lifestyle that included dressing as a man and affairs with many lovers, most notable being the composer Frédéric Chopin.

Dorset, Thomas Sackville, Earl of, 1536-1608

An English statesman, poet, and dramatist; co-author of the first English drama written in blank verse; described in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as "representative of his period and its culture as a renaissance man: poet, scholar, traveler, courtier, statesman, a lover and patron of music and fine art. He was a religious man with the experience and pragmatism to tolerate his neighbors' (and his family's) freedom of conscience in private, and not only a loyal servant of the crown but also a discreet man of personal charm and moral integrity."

Sack, Antoinette

Daughter of August Friedrich Wilhelm Sack, 1703-1786 (Library of Congress Name Authority), chaplain to Friedrich Wilhelm I, and sister to Friedrich Samuel Gottfried Sack, 1738-1817 (Library of Congress Name Authority), chaplain successively to Frederick the Great, Frederick Wilhelm II, and Frederick Wilhelm III.