Augustan

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 dying in Winslow, Buckinghamshire, Sarah Fyge was twice married, first unwillingly to a lawyer, Edward Field, who died leaving her a well-off widow without children, and second very unhappily, and publicly so, to the much older Reverend Thomas Egerton, rector of Adstock, who died in 1720.

Robert Dodsley wrote both Servitude (1729) and The Muse in Livery (1732) while working for the Hon. Mrs. Lowther. Later he devised several plays, The Toyshop (1735), The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (1741), and Cleone (1758).

• Griffin, Dustin. “Collins, William (1721-1759).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.

• Ezell, Margaret J. M.. “Chudleigh , Mary, Lady Chudleigh (bap. 1656, d. 1710).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
• The Poetry and Prose of Mary, Lady Chudleigh. Ed. Margaret J. M. Ezell. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

An illegitimate child, possibly of George Savile, marquess of Halifax (1633-95), Henry Carey earned a living as a writer of burlesques, poems, and occasionally music. A protégé of Addison, who liked his "Sally in our Alley," Carey succeeded best when he was most amusing.