English

Born on December 30, 1676, at Bampton, Oxfordshire, John Philips was educated at Winchester from 1691 and Christ Church, Oxford, from 1697. Of his poems, The Splendid Shilling (1701), at first published anonymously, and Cyber (1708) were the most highly regarded in his time. The first imitated Milton, and the second Virgil's Georgick.

• Palmer, Roy. "Percy, Thomas (1729–1811)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.

• Irving, John. "Peerson, Martin (1571–1650/51)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Born on March 14, 1844, in London, Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy earned his living in the Natural History Department of the British Museum, which he joined as a junior assistant in the Department of Printed Books in June 1861. He eventually became a valued expert on reptiles. O'Shaughnessy published four volumes of poetry, in 1870, 1872, 1874, and posthumously in 1881.