A versatile poet, Young is best remembered for his Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality (1742-1746), which attained phenomenal popularity and went through hundreds of printings over the century following its publication. His satires were published as The Universal Passion (1725-1728) and revised as a single volume, Love of Fame, the Universal Passion (1728). He also authored the tragedies Busiris (1719), The Revenge (1721), and The Brothers (1752) as well as the poem Resignation (1762).

Popular English actress who succeeded Susannah Cibber as the country's leading tragedienne.

Persian king from 486 to 465 BCE. In revenge for the humiliation of his father, Darius I, at Marathon, Xerxes attacked Greece and briefly occupied Athens, which he sacked and pillaged. and

Greek historian. A devotee of Socrates, he authored several laudatory works about him.

Student contributor.

Playwright who wrote four popular plays in his lifetime: the Love in a Wood (1671), the Gentleman Dancing-Master (1672), the Country Wife (1675), and the Plain Dealer (1676).

Poet and member of Henry VIII's court circle, Sir Thomas is credited with introducing the Italian sonnet and terza rima into English literature, along with the French rondeau.

Niece of Sir Philip Sidney and Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, Wroth authored, among other works, The Countesse of Montgomeries Urania (1621) and a sonnet sequence, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, which was printed at the end of Urania.

Wordsworth's most famous publication is Lyrical Ballads (with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798; repeatedly revised and expanded, including its famous Preface, added in 1800 and expanded thereafter).

Sister to poet William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth is best known for her journals, especially those from her time at Grasmere and Alfoxden. She and William resided together after 1795, and she became an important part of the creative community that included Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey and others. In addition to her journals, she authored a number of poems, a travel diary of a tour of Scotland, and an account of a Grasmere couple who died in a snowstorm, leaving eight orphan children.