Poet, essayist, editor, and the biographer of Letitia Elizabeth Landon.

Scottish poet whose work The Grave gave rise to the graveyard school, a genre of poetry characterized by its morbid appeal and themes of mortality and bereavement.

An English jurist and Tory politician, William Blackstone is best remembered for his Commentaries on the Laws of England, an expansive and accessible treatise on English common law which influenced the development of the United States legal system after the Revolutionary War. Blackstone also studied poetry during his time at Oxford, and his notes on Shakespeare were published in George Steevens' 1793 edition of Shakespeare's plays.

The legacy of this physician and prolific poet as one admired by Samuel Johnson and yet the butt of scorn in Alexander Pope's Dunciad epitomizes the controversies over his merits among his contemporaries. Creation (1712) is his most respected poem.

Known as "the blind bard," the poet Blacklock lost his sight in early his childhood.

Not to be confused with Isaac Bickerstaff, the alias used by Richard Steele and Jonathan Swift, this Isaac Bickerstaff (or Bickerstaffe) was an Irish playwright and librettist. He had varying success in his works throughout his life, but his play The Maid of the Mill (1765) was one of his successful ones. He also wrote Lionel and Clarissa (1768), a comic opera.

Pseudonym. See Richard Steele and Jonathan Swift.

Better known as "Master Betty" or "the young Roscius," William Henry West Betty was a popular child actor on the English stage in the early nineteenth century. Though a sensation as a child actor, he was not successful as an adult.

A prominent bluestocking and salonniere, Berry edited The Works of Horatio Walpole, Earl of Orford (1798) under the name Robert Berry. Her memoirs and letters were published as Social Life in England and France from the French Revolution, (1831) and Journals and Correspondence (1865) .

French children's author whose stories were popular with both the French and, in translation, British audiences. L'Ami des enfants (1782-3) is the best known of these works.