William Archer (23 September 1856 – 27 December 1924) was a Scottish author, theatre critic, and English spelling reformer based, for most of his career, in London. He was an early advocate of the plays of Henrik Ibsen, and a friend and advocate of George Bernard Shaw.
Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke (22 March 1771 – 27 June 1848) was a German, later Swiss, author and reformer. Most of his life was spent, and most of his reputation earned, in Switzerland. He had an extensive civil service career, and wrote histories, fiction and other works which were widely known.
Antoine Louis Prosper "Frédérick" Lemaître (28 July 1800 – 26 January 1876) was a French actor and playwright, one of the most famous players on the celebrated Boulevard du Crime.
Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (13 February 1707 – 12 April 1777), called Crébillon fils or Crébillon le Gai (Crébillon the Gay) to distinguish him from his father, was a French novelist.
Born in Paris, he was the son of a famous tragedian, Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (Crébillon père or Crébillon the Tragic). He received a Jesuit education at the elite Lycée Louis-le-Grand. Early on he composed various light works, including plays for the Italian Theatre in Paris, and published a short tale called Le Sylphe in 1730. From 1729 to 1739 he participated in a series of dinners called "Le Caveau" (named after the cabaret where they were held) with other artists, including Alexis Piron, Charles Collé, and Charles Duclos.
The publication of Tanzaï et Néadarné, histoire japonaise (1734), which contained thinly veiled attacks on the Papal bull Unigenitus, the cardinal de Rohan and others, landed him briefly in the prison at Vincennes. His novel Les Égarements du cœur et de l'esprit was published between 1736 and 1738 and was, although he continued to edit it in 1738, never finished. Publication of Le Sopha, conte moral, an erotic political satire, in 1742 forced him into exile from Paris for several months.Around 1744 he entered into a romantic liaison with Lady Henrietta Maria Stafford, daughter of a Jacobite chamberlain, and they were married in 1748. A son was born in 1746 and died in 1750. Despite financial hardship, they lived together until her death in 1755. Meanwhile, he published La Nuit et le moment (1745), Ah! quel conte! and Les Heureux Orphelins (1754). Inheriting nothing from Henriette, he was forced to sell his large library in 1757 and eventually found steady income as a royal censor (like his father) in 1759. In 1768 and 1772 he published his last two novels, Lettres de la duchesse de *** au duc de *** and Lettres athéniennes.
Nicolas-Joseph-Laurent Gilbert (December 15, 1750 – November 16, 1780) was a French poet born at Fontenoy-le-Château, Vosges, Lorraine.
Having completed his education at the college of Dole, he devoted himself for a time to a half-scholastic, half-literary life at Nancy, but in 1774 he found his way to the capital. As an opponent of the Encyclopaedists and a panegyrist of Louis XV, he received considerable pensions. He died in Paris in 1780 from the results of a fall from his horse.
The satiric force of one or two of his pieces, as Mon Apologie (1778) and Le Dix-huitième Siècle (1775), would alone be sufficient to preserve his reputation, which has been further increased by modern writers, who, like Alfred de Vigny in his Stello (chaps. 7-13), considered him a victim to the spite of his philosophic opponents. His best-known verses are the Ode imitée de plusieurs psaumes, usually entitled Adieux à la vie.
Among his other works may be mentioned Les Familles du Darius et d'Eridame, histoire persane (1770), Le Carnaval des auteurs (1773), Odes nouvelles et patriotiques (1775). Gilbert's Œuvres complètes were first published in 1788.
Sir Roger Newdigate, 5th Baronet (30 May 1719 – 23 November 1806) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1742 and 1780. He was a collector of antiquities.
Edgar Stuart, Duke of Cambridge (14 September 1667 – 8 June 1671) was the fourth son of James, Duke of York (later James II of England) and his first wife Anne Hyde. He was second in the line of succession to the English and Scottish thrones.
Antoine Jérôme Balard (30 September 1802 – 30 April 1876) was a French chemist and one of the discoverers of bromine.
Emmanuel Hiel (30 May 1834 – 27 August 1899), was a Flemish-Dutch poet and prose writer.
Hiel was born at Sint-Gillis-bij-Dendermonde. During his life he held various jobs, from teacher and government official to journalist and bookseller, busily writing all the time both for the theatre and the magazines of North and South Netherlands. His last posts were those of librarian at the Industrial Museum and professor of declamation at the Conservatoire in Brussels.Hiel took an active and prominent part in the so-called Flemish movement in Belgium, and his name is constantly associated with those of Jan van Beers, Jan Frans Willems, and Peter Benoit. Benoit set some of Hiel's verses to music, notably in his oratorios Lucifer (performed in London at the Royal Albert Hall and elsewhere) and De Schelde ("The Scheldt"). The Dutch composer Richard Hol (of Utrecht) composed music for Hiel's Ode to Liberty, and van Gheluwe used Hiel's verses in his Songs for Big and Small Folk (second edition, much enlarged, 1879). That music greatly contributed the popularity of Hiel's writing in schools and among Belgian choral societies.Hiel also translated several foreign lyrics. His rendering of Tennyson's Dora was published in Antwerp around 1871. For the national festival of 1880 at Brussels, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Belgian independence, Hiel composed two cantatas, Belgenland ("The Land of the Belgians") and Rer Belgenland ("Honour to Belgium"), which, set to music, were much appreciated.Hiel's efforts to counteract Walloon influences and bring about a rapprochement between the Netherlanders in the north and the Teutonic racial sympathizers across the Rhine made him very popular with both. A volume of his best poems was in 1874 the first in a collection of Dutch authors published in Leipzig, Germany.He died in 1899 at Schaerbeek.
Charles Mathews (28 June 1776, London – 28 June 1835, Devonport) was an English theatre manager and comic actor, well known during his time for his gift of impersonation and skill at table entertainment. His play At Home, in which he played every character, was the first monopolylogue and the defining work in the genre.