William Congreve was an English playwright, poet and Whig politician. His works, which form an important component of Restoration literature, were known for their use of satire and the comedy of manners genre. Notable plays he wrote include The Old Bachelor (1693), The Double Dealer (1694), Love for Love (1695), The Mourning Bride (1697) and The Way of the World (1700). Dying in London, Congreve was buried at the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
William Cowper was an English poet and Anglican hymnwriter. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th-century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called him "the best modern poet", whilst William Wordsworth particularly admired his poem "Yardley-Oak".
William Cowper Brann was an American journalist also known as Brann the Iconoclast. During his life, he gained a reputation as a "brilliant though vitriolic editorialist."
William Coxe was an English historian and priest who served as a travelling companion and tutor to nobility from 1771 to 1786. He wrote numerous historical works and travel chronicles. Ordained a deacon in 1771, he served as a rector and then archdeacon of Bemerton near Salisbury from 1786 until his death.
William Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post. Born in Massachusetts, he started his career as a lawyer but showed an interest in poetry early in his life. He soon relocated to New York and took up work as an editor at various newspapers. He became one of the most significant poets in early literary America and has been grouped among the fireside poets for his accessible, popular poetry.
William De Witt Hyde was an American educator and academic administrator who served as the president of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine for thirty-two years, from 1885 to his death in 1917.
William Dean Howells was an American realist novelist, literary critic, and playwright, nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters". He was particularly known for his tenure as editor of The Atlantic Monthly, as well as for his own prolific writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day" and the novels The Rise of Silas Lapham and A Traveler from Altruria.
William Dean Howells, né le 1er mars 1837 à Martins Ferry, en Ohio, et mort le 11 mai 1920 sur l'île de Manhattan, à New York, est un écrivain réaliste et critique littéraire américain.
William Derham FRS was an English clergyman, natural theologian, natural philosopher and scientist. He produced the earliest reasonably accurate measurement of the speed of sound.
