English

Born on May 12, 1812, in London, Edward Lear as a teenager found artistic work drawing zoological specimens for illustrated books. One of his patrons was the earl of Derby, for whose children he devised the Book of Nonsense, published in 1846, the year after he had given drawing lessons to Queen Victoria.

Brought up in Brackley, Northamptonshire, the daughter of a gardener, and educated only within her family, Mary Leapor worked as her father's housekeeper after her mother's death in 1742. She wrote poetry that came to the attention of Bridget Freemantle, a member of the local gentry.

Born and educated in London, L. E. L. (as she signed her prolific output of poems, stories, and novels) was one of the most popular women writers of the nineteenth century and earned an excellent livelihood from her writings, which she needed to support her parents and siblings.

Born February 10, 1775, in London and educated at Christ's Hospital, Charles Lamb was a minor poet (and friend of S. T. Coleridge), but also the earliest editor of Elizabethan drama, and the greatest essay-writer of his age. He first took a job at South Sea House and from 1792 to his retirement in 1825 at East India House.

The standard edition of Jonson's Works is the monumental one by Herford and Simpson (11 vols.; London: Oxford University Press, 1925-53). Most of Jonson's poems appeared first in the Folio of 1616, the later poems in the Second Folio of 1640.

The standard edition of Johnson’s verse is the sixth volume of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson: Poems, ed. E. L. McAdam, Jr., and George Milne (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1964).