One of the principal figures of the Romantic movement, John Keats belonged to the second generation of Romantic poets, alongside Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. Having received little formal education, Keats was initially apprenticed to a surgeon, and he eventually broke off his apprenticeship to work as a dresser, becoming more involved in the literary realm as he began to dabble in poetry in 1814. By 1817, his literary interests had come to fruition, and he left his position to dedicate himself entirely to poetry.

English tragic actor. Kean's sensational stage celebrity was undermined by his ferocious temper and chronic drunkenness. Kean began his stage career under his mother's supervision while still a child. After quite a few years as a provincial actor, his career was launched in earnest in 1814 with his spellbinding and original portrayal of Shylock in the Drury Lane production of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.

Actor, theater manager, and son of the more famous Edmund Kean, with whom Charles sometimes shared the stage. More successful in the provinces than in London, Charles Kean nevertheless appeared at Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and Haymarket theatres, as well as several performances on the American stage.

German philosopher who marked the transition from the Enlightenment to the nineteenth century. His Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen (1764) was translated as Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. Among his major works that followed, the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781; translated as Critique of Pure Reason, 1855) established his fame when its ideas were condensed and reformulated in Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik (1783; translated as Prolegomena to Every Future Metaphysic, 1819).

Living from approximately 55-127 CE, Decimus Junius Juvenalis, the most influential of the Roman satiric poets, is known in English as "Juvenal." Juvenal's collection of poems, Satires, has been studied for its representation of ancient Rome and its critique of Roman paganism.

Jupiter, often called Jove in English, is the king of gods in the ancient Roman pantheon. He is often considered equvalent to the Greek deity Zeus.

Born Dorothea Bland, Dorothy Jordan was an Anglo-Irish actress who changed her name to avoid rumors regarding her illegitimate child with the future King William IV. Jordan ultimately bore ten of William's children, all out of wedlock. A lively actress, Jordan was best known for her comic breeches roles.

An English playwright, poet, and literary critic, whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularized the comedy of humours, a genre of comedy based on characters who each show one or two overriding traits based on the dominance of corresponding bodily humours. Known for satirical plays and for his lyric poetry, he is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I.

English literary editor best remembered for his 1812 revision of David Erskine Baker's Biographia Dramatica.

Henry Jones was an Irish poet. Though he made promising connections in the nobility and with actor, playwright, and theatre manager Colley Cibber, his drunkenness and irascible temper often got in the way of his success. He wrote The Earl of Essex, staged in 1753.