Curated playlist
18th-century English male writers
- William WordsworthWordsworth's greatest poem, The Prelude, appeared only months after he died. His widow, Mary, published it in 1850.
- Alexander PopeAfter The Dunciad angered his targets, poet Alexander Pope carried pistols on walks.
- Samuel JohnsonSamuel Johnson told his publishers he could write an English dictionary in three years, and it took eight.
- Joseph PriestleyJoseph Priestley isolated oxygen but never accepted what it meant.
- Isaac NewtonIsaac Newton was born so small, he said, that he could have fit inside a quart mug.
- William HogarthHogarth's 1751 print Gin Lane shows a mother letting her baby fall to its death. The prints supported the Gin Act 1751.
- Daniel DefoeDaniel Defoe stood in a pillory in 1703 for a pamphlet. Years later he wrote Robinson Crusoe.
- Thomas Robert MalthusThomas Malthus argued that population always grows faster than the food supply.
- John Hawkins (author)Sir John Hawkins was at the bedside of Dr Samuel Johnson when the great man died, a distinction his better-known rival biographer could never claim. James Boswell had been in Scotland for some months. Hawkins was born on the 29th of March…
- Humphry DavyIn 1799, chemist Humphry Davy breathed sixteen quarts of laughing gas for nearly seven minutes.
- Edward GibbonEdward Gibbon said commanding militia grenadiers helped him understand the Roman legion.
- Nicholas Rowe (writer)Nicholas Rowe made the first eighteenth-century edition of Shakespeare.
- Thomas RymerThomas Rymer wrote in 1681 that you should not expect truth from an historiographer royal.