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Much of what we know about the Early Modern era comes from the writings of that time. With the proliferation of the printing press and a somewhat more literate population, much more literature of this period is preserved (as opposed to earlier times). Whether from a novel, play, travel journal or scientific paper, these writings add greatly to our knowledge of our history.
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Cross-listed in Explorers

Armagil Waad

aka: Wade
borndied
1511 ca1568, Jun 20
a chief clerk of the Privy Council, servant of government and an English parliamentarian. In 1536 he joined as an adventurer in Hore’s voyage to North America. Waad is said to have written an account of this voyage, which was afterwards printed. No such work has been traced.
Links (4)


Peter Wadding

borndied
1581 ca1644, Sep 13
an Irish Jesuit theologian. He wrote several religious tracts. While at Antwerp Wadding had a controversy with the famous Arminian Simon Episcopius. The disputations of both were published in Dutch after their death in one volume. Besides those mentioned, he is said to have published several works under a pseudonym.
Links (3)


Elise Waerenskjold

aka: Wærenskjold
borndied
1815, Feb 191895, Jan 22
a Norwegian-American writer, temperance leader and early pioneer in Texas. Her numerous writings including letters from the late 1840s through the mid-1890s remain an invaluable source of information on Norwegian immigrant life in Texas.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

William Wake

bornactivedied
1657, Jan 261716-17371737, Jan 24
a priest and Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England from 1716 until his death in 1737. His writings are numerous, the chief being his State of the Church and Clergy of England, historically deduced (London, 1703). In these writings he produced a massive defence of Anglican Orders and again disproved the Nag's Head Fable by citing a number o...
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Links (6)Notes (1)


Robert Wakefield

borndied
unknown1537
an English linguist and scholar. He wrote in favour of Henry VIII's divorce, after being persuaded by Richard Pace to drop his support for Catherine of Aragon; in 1528 he issued a work putting the king’s case, and showing by its dedication that he now had Thomas ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Artists

Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller

aka: Waldmüller
borndied
17931865
an Austrian painter and writer. Waldmüller was one of the most important Austrian painters of the Biedermeier period. Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller was one of the most important Austrian painters of the Biedermeier period. Whether it was the conquest of the landscape and thus the convincing rendering of closeness or distance, the accurate characterisation of ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Peter Walkden

borndied
1684, Oct 161769, Nov 5
an English Presbyterian minister and diarist. His diary for the years 1725, 1729, and 1730, the only portion which has survived, was published in 1866 by William Dobson of Preston.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Performers

George Walker

borndied
1803, Mar 131879, Apr 23
an English chess player and author of The Celebrated Analysis of A D Philidor (London, 1832), The Art of Chess-Play: A New Treatise on the Game of Chess (London, 1832), A Selection of Games at Chess played by Philidor (London, 1835), Chess Made Easy (London, 1836), and Chess Studies (London, 1844). In 1839 visited Paris and...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

John Walker [1]

borndied
unknown1588
an English churchman, archdeacon of Essex from 1571. Walker wrote a dedicatory epistle to Certaine Godlie Homilies or Sermons, translated by Robert Norton from Rodolph Gualter, London, 1573.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Thomas Walkington

borndied
unknown1621
an English cleric and author. Walkington was author of a book that anticipated Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. It was entitled 'The Optick Glasse of Humors'. Walkington was also author of 'An Exposition of the two first verses of the sixth chapter to the Hebrews'.
Links (1)


Catharina Wallenstedt

borndied
16271719
a Swedish letter writer and courtier. She is known for her collection of letters. Composed of a collection of about 350 letters written between 1673 and 1718, mostly to her spouse and daughter Greta, they have been the object of research.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Governance

Edmund Waller

bornactivedied
1606, Mar 31624-16861687, Oct 21
an English poet and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1624 and 1679. In 1645 the Poems of Waller were first published in London, in three different editions; there has been much discussion of the order and respective authority of these issues, but nothing is decidedly known.
Links (12)Gallery (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyComposers

Johan Olof Wallin

bornactivedied
1779, Oct 151837-18391839, Jun 30
a Swedish minister, orator, poet and later Lutheran Church of Sweden Archbishop of Uppsala, Sweden between 1837-1839. He is most remembered today for his hymns. Besides hymns, Wallin wrote several secular poems highly praised in his time. He also published several sermons and speeches.
Links (1)


Nehemiah Wallington

borndied
15981658
an English Puritan artisan (a wood turner) and chronicler. from Eastcheap. He left over 2,500 pages and 50 volumes on himself, religion and politics. Wallington left three compilations of contemporary events.
Links (1)


Ralph Wallis

borndied
unknown1669
a nonconformist pamphleteer, known as ‘the Cobler of Gloucester.’ At the Restoration he appears as a pamphleteer of the Mar-Prelate type, attacking with rude jocular virulence the teaching and character of the conforming clergy.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Governance

Horace Walpole

aka: Horatio, 4th Earl of Orford
bornactivedied
1717, Sep 241737-17971797, Mar 2
an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician. He had Strawberry Hill House built in Twickenham, south-west London, reviving the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors. His literary reputation rests on the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), and his Letters, which are of significant s...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Composers

Johann Gottfried Walther

borndied
1684, Sep 181748, Mar 23
a German music theorist, organist, composer, and lexicographer of the Baroque era. Walther was born at Erfurt. Not only was his life almost exactly contemporaneous to that of Johann Sebastian Bach, he was the famous composer's cousin. Walther was most well known as the compiler of the Musicalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732), an enormous dictionary of music and...
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Links (1)


Ignatius Walvis

borndied
16531714
an 18th-century priest, historian, and writer from the Netherlands. In 1688 he replaced Jacob Catz (1639-1712) as pastor of Gouda, who had been called to Utrecht to assist Petrus Codde. In Gouda Walvis wrote his Description of Gouda, which was published the year of his death.
Links (1)


William Walwyn

borndied
16001681
an English pamphleteer, a Leveller and a medical practitioner. He advocated religious toleration and emerged as a leader of the Levellers in 1647 which led to his imprisonment in 1649. He published many political, medical and religious writings.
Links (1)


Wang Tingkai

borndied
unknownunknown
a Chinese official exiled to the Central Asian frontier during the period in office of the Military Governor Songyun (1802–9). He was one of the most prominent of the exiled officials used by Songyun to compile his gazeteer of Xinjiang, together with Qi Yunshi and Xu Song.
Links (1)


Wang Wei

borndied
15971647
a Chinese poet. Orphaned at the age of seven, she became a prostitute in Yangzhou. In later life she was twice married and twice widowed, before becoming a priestess with the name "Taoist Master in the Straw coat". Thereafter she traveled throughout central China on a boat, writing poems celebrating nature. She later traveled to Japan for monetary endeavors ...
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Links (1)


Wang Xihou

borndied
unknownunknown
a Chinese scholar from Xinchang County (modern-day Yifeng County, Jiangxi) who lived during the Qing dynasty. He was executed under the Qing government's literary inquisition policies during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor.
Links (1)


Nathaniel Wanley

borndied
16341680
an English clergyman and writer, known for The Wonders of the Little World. He also wrote religious tracts and compiled a history of the Fielding family, which is printed in John Nichols's Leicestershire.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in MilitaryGovernance

George Drought Warburton

borndied
18161857
an Irish soldier, politician and writer on Canada. Warburton wrote a description of the dominion of Canada, under its ancient vernacular name, as Hochelaga; or England in the New World (1846). He also wrote a followup volume and a biography of Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough and Monmouth.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

William Warburton

borndied
1698, Dec 241779, Jun 7
an English writer, literary critic and churchman, Bishop of Gloucester from 1759 until his death. He edited editions of the works of his friend Alexander Pope, and of more
Links (1)


James H. Ward

bornactivedied
1806, Sep 251823-18611861, Jun 27
the first officer of the United States Navy killed during the American Civil War. He taught courses in ordnance and gunnery at the Naval School at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which were later published as An Elementary Course of Instruction in Ordnance and Gunnery. He also wrote A Manual of Naval Tactics — a scholarly work which would run to four editions ...
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Links (5)


Nathaniel Ward

borndied
15781652, Oct
a Puritan clergyman and pamphleteer in England and Massachusetts. He wrote the first constitution in North America in 1641. In 1645 Ward began his second book, The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America. This was published in England in January, 1646-7.
Links (1)


Ned Ward

aka: Edward
borndied
16671731, Jun 20
a satirical writer and publican in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century based in London. His most famous work is The London Spy. Published in 18 monthly instalments starting in November 1698 it was described (by the author) as a "complete survey" of the London scene. It was first published in book form in 1703.
Links (1)


Robert Plumer Ward

borndied
1765, Mar 191846, Aug 13
an English barrister, politician, and novelist. George Canning said that his law books were as pleasant as novels, and his novels as dull as law books.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in AstronomersClergyScientists

Seth Ward

borndied
16171689, Jan 6
an English mathematician, astronomer, and bishop. King Charles II appointed him to the livings of St Lawrence Jewry in London, and Uplowman, Devonshire, in 1661. He also became dean of Exeter Cathedral (1661) and rector of St Breock, Cornwall in 1662. In the latter year he was consecrated Bishop of Exeter, and in 1667 he was translated to the see of Salisbur...
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Links (1)


Thomas Ward

borndied
1652, Apr 131708
an English author who converted to Catholicism. His most popular work, England's Reformation, is a poem in four cantos in the metre of Hudibras. It first appeared posthumously in 1710, and since then in several editions.
Links (1)


James Ware

borndied
1594, Nov 261666, Dec 1
an Anglo-Irish historian. Ware's first book, published in 1626, was Archiepisco Porum Cassiliensium & Tuamensium Vitae, followed by Caenobia Cistertientia Hiberniae and De Praesulibus Lageniae, both in 1631. In 1633 he published three edited works, and several others in his later life.
Links (1)


Cajsa Warg

aka: Anna Christina Warg, Kajsa Warg
borndied
1703, Mar 231769, Feb 5
a Swedish cookbook author, who is today among the most well-known cooks in Swedish history. In 1755, Cajsa Warg inherited 5000 daler after her mother died. The same year, she published Hjelpreda I Hushållningen För Unga Fruentimber ("guide to housekeeping for young women") which came out in fourteen editions of which the last version was printed in 1822.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Legal

William Warner

borndied
1558 ca1609, Mar 9
an English poet and lawyer. His chief work is a long poem in fourteen-syllabled verse, entitled Albion's England (1586), and dedicated to Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon. His history of his country begins with Noah, and is brought down to Warner's own time including the beheading of more
Links (1)


Mercy Otis Warren

bornactivedied
1728, Sep 141765-18051814, Oct 19
a political writer and propagandist of the American Revolution. In the eighteenth century, topics such as politics and war were thought to be the province of men. Few men and fewer women had the education or training to write about these subjects. Warren was an exception. During the years before the American Revolution, Warren published poems and plays that ...
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Links (22)


Joseph Warton

borndied
1722, Apr1800, Feb 23
an English academic and literary critic. In his early days Joseph wrote poetry, of which the most notable piece is The Enthusiast (1744), an early precursor of Romanticism. His career as a critic was always more illustrious, and he produced editions of classical poets such as Virgil as well as English poets including John Dryden.
Links (1)


Thomas Warton

borndied
17281790
an English literary historian, critic, and poet. From 1785 to 1790 he was the Poet Laureate of England. He is sometimes called Thomas Warton the younger to distinguish him from his father Thomas Warton the elder. His most famous poem remains The Pleasures of Melancholy, a representative work of the Graveyard poets.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Thomas Warton the Elder

borndied
1688 ca1745, Sep 10
an English clergyman and schoolmaster, known as the second professor of poetry at Oxford, a position he owed to Jacobite sympathies. Warton was a writer of occasional verse, but published none collectively in his lifetime.
Links (1)


George Henry Wathen

borndied
1816, Nov 211879, Nov 10
a geologist, author, magazine publisher, and South African politician of the Victorian era known primarily for his books on the antiquities of Egypt, and the gold fields of Victoria, Australia. Wathen sailed to Port Phillip in Victoria, Australia, arriving prior to the 1851 Victorian gold rush, and explored the gold fields in the colony. This resulted in a ...
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Links (1)


John Watkins [2]

bornactivedied
unknown1792-1831unknown
an English miscellaneous writer, known as a biographer. He is most famous for being the author of An Universal Biographical and Historical Dictionary. His first independent publication was ‘An Essay towards the History of Bideford,’ 1792. Chapter x. consists of the depositions in a trial for witchcraft held at Exeter on 14 August 1682.
Links (1)


Thomas Watson [1]

borndied
15551592
an English lyrical poet. He wrote in both English and Latin, and was particularly admired for the compositions in Latin. His unusual 18 line sonnets were influential, though their form was not generally imitated.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Thomas Watson [2]

bornactivedied
1620 ca1646-1670s1686
an English, Nonconformist, Puritan preacher and author. He showed strong Presbyterian views during the civil war, with, however, an attachment to the king, and in 1651 he was imprisoned briefly with some other ministers for his share in Christopher Love's plot to recall Charles II of England. Upon the Declaration of Indulgence in 1672 he obtained a licence t...
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Links (9)Notes (1)


W. Watson

bornactivedied
unknown1602unknown
Referenced only in period dictionaries under the word Aulic


Cross-listed in Clergy

Gilbert Watts

borndied
unknown1657
Gilbert was born at Rotherham, Yorkshire. He studied for a few terms at Cambridge, and on his admission as batler or servitor at Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1607, he was permitted to reckon them towards qualifying for a degree (Oxford Univ. Reg. ii. i. 371). He graduated B.A. on 28 Jan. 1610–1611, M.A. on 7 July 1614, was elected a fellow in 1621, and beca...
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Links (1)


Isaac Watts

borndied
16741748
an English Christian hymnwriter, theologian and logician. A prolific and popular hymn writer, his work was part of evangelization. He was recognized as the "Father of English Hymnody", credited with some 750 hymns. Many of his hymns remain in use today and have been translated into numerous languages.
Links (1)


Anna Weamys

aka: Anne Weamys
bornactivedied
unknown1650s-1688unknown
an English author. Weamys has been identified as the author of A Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia (1651), which appeared under the name "Mistress A. W." Little is known of her life, but Patrick Cullen situates her in the context of a network of royalist sympathizers, including aristocratic patron Henry Pierrepont and his daughters Anne and Grace, ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Astronomers

Edmund Weaver

borndied
1683 ca1748, Dec 27
an English astronomer and land surveyor. His The British Telescope ephemerides (astronomical tables) is considered an important 18th-century publication on the movement of planets. Weaver supported the heliocentric view of the universe. He opposed criticism of the accuracy of ephemerides formulated by more
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Francis Webb

borndied
1735, Sep 181815, Aug 2
an English writer. He entered the nonconformist ministry, became pastor of the congregation at Honiton, and on 27 September 1758 was inducted assistant to Joseph Burroughs, minister of the general baptist congregation at Paul's Alley, London. On the death of Burroughs, on 23 Nov. 1761, Webb undertook the sole charge.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Architects

John Webb

bornactivedied
16111628-1660s1672, Oct 24
an English architect and scholar. In 1654 Webb designed the first classical portico on an English country house, at The Vyne in Hampshire. In the Corinthian style, this portico stamps this older house as Palladian, 50 years before the birth of Lord Burlington. Webb was an amateur scholar who collaborated with Inigo Jones and Walter Charleton to produce a boo...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in AstronomersClergy

Thomas William Webb

bornactivedied
1807, Dec 141829-18851885, May 19
a British astronomer. Through his career T. W. Webb served as a clergyman at various places including Gloucester, and finally in 1852 was assigned to the parish of Hardwicke near the border with Wales. In addition to serving faithfully the members of his parish, T. W. Webb pursued astronomical observation in his spare time. It was at Hardwick that he wrote h...
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Links (2)


William Webbe

bornactivedied
unknown1568-1591unknown
an English critic and translator. Little is known about him except that he attended Trinity College, Cambridge, and was a tutor for distinguished families. He wrote a Discourse of English Poetrie, in which he discusses prosody and reviews English poetry up to his own day. He also translated Virgil's first two Eclogues.
Links (1)


John Webster

borndied
1580 ca1634 ca
an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. His life and career overlapped William Shakespeare's.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in GovernanceEducators

Noah Webster

bornactivedied
1758, Oct 161781-18431843, May 28
an American lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English-language spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author. He has been called the "Father of American Scholarship and Education". His blue-backed speller books taught five generations of American children how to spell and read, secularizing their education. According to Ellis (1979), he gav...
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Timeline (4)Links (16)


Cross-listed in Clergy

William Webster

borndied
16891758
a British clergyman in the Church of England and a theological writer. Webster was a voluminous writer. In 1723 he edited The Life of General Monk. In 1740, from materials furnished by a merchant, Webster published a pamphlet on the wool industry called Consequences of Trade to the Wealth and Strength of any Nation, by a Draper of London.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Educators

David Wedderburn

borndied
1580 ca1646, Oct 23
a writer, and schoolmaster at Aberdeen Grammar School. Though his date of birth is not known, he was baptised on 2 January 1580, and was educated in Aberdeen. In April 1602 he started working at Aberdeen Grammar School. He had a number of publications, including his 1633 work Institutiones grammaticae; and Vocabula, first published in 1636. He died in Aberde...
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Links (1)


Christian Weise

aka: Siegmund Gleichviel, Orontes, Catharinus Civilis, Tarquinius Eatullus
borndied
1642, Apr 301708, Oct 21
a German writer, dramatist, poet, pedagogue and librarian of the Baroque era. He produced a large number of dramatic works, noted for their social criticism and idiomatic style. In the 1670s he started a fashion for German "political novels". He has also been credited with the invention of the mathematical Euler diagram, though this is uncertain.
Links (1)


Adam Weishaupt

borndied
1748, Feb 61830, Nov 18
a German philosopher and founder of the Order of the Illuminati, a secret society. On 1 May 1776 Johann Adam Weishaupt founded the "Illuminati" in the Electorate of Bavaria. He adopted the name of "Brother Spartacus" within the order. Even Encyclopedia references vary on the goal of the order, such as New Advent saying the Order was not egalitarian or democr...
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Timeline (1)Links (1)Gallery (1)


Johan Peter Weisse

borndied
1832, Aug 131886, Mar 7
a Norwegian philologist. In October 1858 he was hired as co-editor (together with Nicolai Mejdell) of the newspaper Christiania-Posten. He is remembered for writing political and satirical commentary, and a 25-piece series between July 1859 and January 1860 on Italian history and society.
Links (1)


Sir Anthony Weldon

borndied
15831648
an English 17th century courtier and politician. He is also the purported author of A Description of Scotland and The Court and Character of King James I, although this attribution has been challenged: it is unclear whether Weldon was the author of either of these works.
Links (1)


Johan Sebastian Welhaven

borndied
1807, Dec 221873, Oct 21
a Norwegian author, poet, critic and art theorist. He has been considered "one of the greatest figures in Norwegian literature." Welhaven made his name as a representative of conservatism in Norwegian literature in the 19th century. As shown by an attack on Henrik Wergeland's poetry, he opposed the theories of the extreme nationalists.
Links (1)


Georg von Welling

borndied
16551727
a Bavarian alchemical and theosophical writer, known for his 1719 work Opus mago-cabalisticum, published under the pseudonym Gregorius Anglus Sallwigt. By profession he worked in the mining industry, becoming Director in the Baden-Durlacher Office of Building and Mines.
Links (1)


Emmeline B. Wells

borndied
1828, Feb 291921, Apr 25
an American journalist, editor, poet, women's rights advocate and diarist. She served as the fifth Relief Society General President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from 1910 until her death. In 1848, she began maintaining a personal journal. Wells would continue writing in her diaries (forty-six journals are known) until 1920,...
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Links (1)


Helena Wells

borndied
1761 ca1824
an American-English novelist and writer at the end of the eighteenth century. She wrote two novels and two books of nonfiction. According to the ODNB, Wells ran a school in London with her sister from 1789 to 1799, and the subject-matter of Letters on Subjects of Importance to the Happiness of Young Females suggests a switch of career to that of governess.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in PhysiciansInventors

Horace Wells

bornactivedied
1815, Jan 211836-18481848, Jan 24
an American dentist who pioneered the use of anesthesia in dentistry, specifically nitrous oxide (or laughing gas). At age 23, Wells published a booklet "An Essay on Teeth" in which he advocated for his ideas in preventive dentistry, particularly for the use of a toothbrush. In his booklet, he also described tooth development and oral diseases, where he ment...
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Links (9)Notes (3)


Mary Wells

borndied
1762, Dec 161829, Jan 23
an English actress. She published in 1811 ‘Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Sumbel. . .'. The three volumes of this rambling autobiography are occupied principally with details of travels in search of her children, who refused to know her, or of friends.
Links (1)


Sabina Welserin

bornactivedied
unknown1550sunknown
the author of a German cookbook, Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin, which she dated 1553 in her brief epigraph. The Welser were members of the mercantile patriciate of Augsburg, international mercantile bankers and venture capitalists on a par with the Fugger and the Hochstetter. It is one of a very few primary sources for the history of German cuisine.
Links (1)


John Welsh of Ayr

borndied
15681622
a Scottish Presbyterian leader. Welsh later ministered in Kirkcudbright and in Ayr, where he spent five years and with which he was afterwards associated. His preaching resulted in his imprisonment by order of King James VI of Scotland. In 1606 he was exiled to France, where he continued his activities.
Links (1)


Leonard Welsted

borndied
1688, Jun1747, Aug
an English poet and "dunce" in Alexander Pope's writings (both in The Dunciad and in Peri Bathos). Welsted was an accomplished writer who composed in a relaxed, light hearted vein. He was associated with Whig party political figures in his later years (the years in which he earned Pope's enmity), but he was tory earlier, and, in the age of patronage, this se...
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Links (1)


Leonard Welsted

borndied
1688, May/Jun1747, Aug
an English poet and "dunce" in Alexander Pope's writings (both in The Dunciad and in Peri Bathos). Welsted was an accomplished writer who composed in a relaxed, light hearted vein. He was associated with Whig party political figures in his later years (the year...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Artists

Wen Zhenheng

borndied
15851645
a Ming dynasty scholar, painter, landscape garden designer, and great grandson of Wen Zhengming, a famous Ming dynasty painter. Wen Zhenheng's best known work Zhang Wu Zhi ("Treatise on Superfluous Things") written between 1620-1627 was an encyclopedic book about garden architecture and interior design.


Cross-listed in Artists

Wen Zhenmeng

borndied
unknownunknown
a late Ming Dynasty painter, calligrapher, scholar, author, and Chinese garden designer. Today, Wen Zhenmeng's artworks sell at the major, international auction houses, including Christie's and Sotheby's.
Links (1)


Gunnar Wennerberg

borndied
1817, Oct 21901, Aug 24
a Swedish poet, composer and politician. He became a member of the secret society and musical club who called themselves The Juvenals, and for their meetings were written the trios and duets, music and words, which Wennerberg began to publish in 1846. In the second volume of his collected works Wennerberg gave, long afterwards, a very interesting account of ...
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Links (1)


Paul Wentworth

borndied
15331593
a prominent English member of parliament (1559, 1563 and 1572) in the reign of Elizabeth I, was a member of the Lillingstone Lovell branch of the family. He was probably the author of the famous puritan devotional book The Miscellanie, or Regestrie and Methodicall Directorie of Orizons (London, 1615).
Timeline (1)Links (1)


Samuel Werenfels

borndied
1657, Mar 11740, Jun 1
a Swiss theologian. He was a major figure in the move towards a "reasonable orthodoxy" in Swiss Reformed theology. In 1687 he was appointed professor of rhetoric, and in 1696 became a member of the theological faculty, occupying successively, according to the Basel custom, the chairs of dogmatics and polemics, Old Testament, and New Testament.
Links (1)


Harald Nicolai Storm Wergeland

borndied
1814, May 271893, Oct 12
a Norwegian military officer, politician and mountaineer. Having reached the rank of Major General by 1859, he served as Minister of the Army for several periods between 1857 and 1868. He wrote books on a broad range of subjects, including the heating and ventilation of rooms, protection of lesser birds and oyster cultivation.
Links (1)


Henrik Wergeland

borndied
1808, Jun 171845, Jul 12
a Norwegian writer, most celebrated for his poetry but also a prolific playwright, polemicist, historian, and linguist. He is often described as a leading pioneer in the development of a distinctly Norwegian literary heritage and of modern Norwegian culture.
Links (6)


Charles Wesley

borndied
17071788
an English leader of the Methodist movement, son of Anglican clergyman and poet Samuel Wesley, the younger brother of Methodist founder John Wesley and Anglican clergyman Samuel Wesley the Younger. He is mostly remembered for the over 6,000 hymns he wrote.
Timeline (1)Links (1)


Johan Herman Wessel

borndied
17421785
a Norwegian poet who is considered to be one of the most important figures in Denmark–Norway during the enlightenment. He is known for his many humorous and satiric verse tales (ed. 1784-1785), referring to man's foolishness and injustice.
Links (1)


Gilbert West

borndied
17031756
a minor English poet, translator and Christian apologist in the early and middle eighteenth century. Samuel Johnson included him in his Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets. he published the essay Observations on the history and evidence of the resurrection ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Thomas West [2]

borndied
17201779, Jul 10
a Jesuit priest, antiquary and author, significant in being one of the first to write about the attractions of the Lake District. Partly through his book, A Guide to the Lakes, the Romantic vision of the scenery and wilderness of the north of England took hold, ushering in a period of continued tourism in the Lakes.
Links (1)


Jacob Westerbaen

borndied
1599, Sep 71670, Mar 31
a Dutch poet. He fought fiercely against orthodox preachers, for instance in writings such as Krancken-Troost voor Israel in Holland ("Comfort for a Sick Israel in Holland") and wrote and translated plays, mostly comedies.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Edward Weston

borndied
15661635
an English Roman Catholic priest and controversialist. In Reims he began a course of lectures on cases of conscience. In 1593 the college moved to Douai, where Weston lectured in divinity for about ten years. Later he went on mission in England, returning to Douai on 23 September 1612. He maintained a correspondence with Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, who held ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Deborah Fisher Wharton

borndied
17951888
an American Quaker minister, suffragist, social reformer and proponent of women's rights, and the mother of industrialist Joseph Wharton. She was one of a small group of dedicated Quakers who founded Swarthmore College. She was a contemporary and friend of Lucretia Mott and had many of Mott's sympathies but did not actively pursue the women's rights cause, r...
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Links (1)


George Whatley

bornactivedied
unknown1772-1791unknown
a contemporary, friend and correspondent of Benjamin Franklin. He was also Vice-President (1772-1779) and Treasurer (1779-1791) of the Foundling Hospital in London. Whatley was the author of Principles of Trade, published in 1774, which expounded the ...
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Phillis Wheatley

aka: Phyllis, Wheatly
bornactivedied
17531773-17791784
the first published African-American female poet. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven and transported to North America. She was purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston, who taught her to read and write, and encouraged her poetry when they saw her talent. The publication of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Mora...
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Links (2)


Anna Wheeler

aka: Anna Doyle
borndied
1780 ca1848
a writer and advocate of political rights for women and the benefits of contraception. She married Francis Massey Wheeler and after his death she supplemented her income by translating the works of French philosophers. In the early 1830s. she helped to establish the journal Tribune des femmes.
Links (1)


George Whetstone

borndied
1544 ca1587
an English dramatist and author. His first published work, the Rocke of Regard (1576), consisted of tales in prose and verse adapted from the Italian, and in 1578 he published The right, excellent and famous Historye of Promos and Cassandra. In 1582 he published his Heptameron of Civil Discourses, a collection of tales.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyScientistsEducators

William Whewell

borndied
1794, May 241866, Mar 6
an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In his time as a student there, he achieved distinction in both poetry and mathematics. What is most often remarked about Whewell is the breadth of his endeavours. In a time of increasing specialisation, Whewell app...
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Links (1)


Sir Richard Whitbourne

borndied
15611635
an English colonist, mariner and author. He assisted the pirates Peter Easton and Henry Mainwaring to seek pardons from James I of England. In 1620, Whitbourne published A Discourse and Discovery of New-found-land in order to promote colonisation on the island.
Links (1)


Gilbert White

borndied
1720, Jul 181793, Jun 26
a "parson-naturalist", a pioneering English naturalist and ornithologist. He remained unmarried and a curate all his life. He is best known for his Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.
Links (1)


Henry Kirke White

borndied
1785, Mar 211806, Oct 19
an English poet, who died at a young age. He published in 1803 Clifton Grove, a Sketch in Verse, with other Poems, dedicated to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. The book was violently attacked in the Monthly Review (February 1804), but White was rewarded with a kind letter from Robert Southey.
Links (1)


Stephen White

borndied
15751646
a Jesuit author and antiquarian who wrote about the early Irish saints. His best-known work was Apologia pro Hibernia adversus Cambri calumnias, probably written some time before 1615.
Links (1)


William Whitehead

borndied
1715, Feb1785, Apr 14
an English poet and playwright. He became Poet Laureate in 1757 after Thomas Gray declined the position. Much of Whitehead's work was well received: his tragedy The Roman Father was successfully produced by David Garrick in 1750, Creusa, Queen of Athens (1754) was also praised and his sentimental comedies The School for Lovers (1762) and The Trip to Scotland...
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Links (1)


Bulstrode Whitelocke

borndied
1605, Aug 61675, Jul 28
an English lawyer, writer, parliamentarian and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England. Whitelocke was a learned and a sound lawyer. He had hitherto shown himself not unfavourable to reform, but he opposed the revolutionary innovations dictated by ignorant and popular prejudices. He wrote many memorials, annals and notes.
Links (1)


Richard Whitford

aka: Whytford
borndied
unknown1542
an English (or Welsh) Catholic priest known as an author of many devotional works. He studied at Oxford, but was elected a fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, from 1495 to 1504. Afterwards, he traveled to Paris, where he met and befriended Erasmus, Lord Mountjoy's tutor.
Links (1)


Richard Whitlock

bornactivedied
unknown1650sunknown
Author of the satirical book 'Zootomia', published in 1654.


Walt Whitman

borndied
1819, May 311892, Mar 26
an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of...
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Timeline (2)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Sculptors

Anne Whitney

borndied
1821, Sep 21915, Jan 23
an American sculptor and poet. She made full-length and bust sculptures of prominent political and historical figures and her works are in major museums in the United States. She received prestigious commissions for monuments. Two statues of Samuel Adams were ma...
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Links (1)


Geoffrey Whitney

aka: Geffrey
borndied
1548 ca1601 ca
an English poet, now best known for the influence on Elizabethan writing of the Choice of Emblemes that he compiled. Whitney's reputation depends upon his celebrated emblem book. The poems are for the most part in six-line stanzas; a few are in quatrains or are even two-line epigrams. They are addressed to Whitney's kinsmen or friends, or to a notable contem...
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Links (1)


Isabella Whitney

bornactivedied
1547 ca1567-1573unknown
the earliest identified woman to have published secular poetry in the English language. She has been called "the first professional woman poet in England". Isabella Whitney pioneered her field of women poets. She published her poetry in a time when it was not customary for a woman, especially one not of the aristocracy, to do so. In addition, her material co...
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Links (1)


John Greenleaf Whittier

bornactivedied
1807, Dec 171826-18921892, Sep 7
an American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. Frequently listed as one of the Fireside Poets, Whittier was influenced by the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Whittier is remembered particularly for his anti-slavery writings as ...
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Links (15)


Robert Whittington

aka: Wittinton, Whitynton
borndied
1480 ca1553 ca
an English grammarian. He was a pupil of the grammarian John Stanbridge. Whittington was most famous as the author of elementary Latin school books. Each dealt with a different aspect of grammar, and they could be bought individually and cheaply. They were widely sold and frequently republished up to the early 1530s.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Composers

Thomas Whythorne

borndied
15281595
an English composer who wrote what some consider to be the earliest known surviving autobiography in English. Around 1576 Whythorne collected his songs and poetry and linked them with autobiographical passages about his life and the situations which had led him to write each of the songs. The resulting book, entitled booke of songs and sonetts with longe dis...
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Links (1)


Ulrika Widstrom

aka: Widström
borndied
17641841
a Swedish poet and translator. She debuted as a poet in the 1780s, when she aroused attention by some poems, published in the literary papers of the day. Her breakthrough came by the publication of Erotiska sånger (Erotic songs) in 1799. Her poetry was described as very affected by the Gustavian age. Her collected work was published by Carl Julius Lénströ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyPhysicians

Michael Wigglesworth

bornactivedied
16311651-16911705
a Puritan minister, doctor and poet whose poem The Day of Doom was a bestseller in early New England. Wigglesworth believed that he was essentially not worthy of believing in God as a result of his depraved humanity. When he underwent a series of nocturnal emissions in his early life, he was thereafter convinced of his damnation. Through his diaries, ...
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Links (1)


Jane Wilde

aka: Speranza
borndied
18261896
an Irish poet under the pen name "Speranza", supporter of the nationalist movement; and had a special interest in Irish folktales, which she helped to gather. Mother of Oscar Wilde. Lady Wilde wrote for the Young Ireland movement of the 1840s, publishing poems in The Nation under the pseudonym of Speranza. Her works included pro-Irish independence and anti-B...
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Links (1)


Maria de Wilde

borndied
1682, Jan 71729, Apr 11
a Dutch engraver and playwright of the Dutch Republic. She was born and died in Amsterdam, where she played an active part in the upper-class bourgeois world of artists and writers, and gained a reputation by engraving her wealthy father's art collection. Formerly credited also with four plays, modern scholars only ascribe a tragedy and possibly a comedy to ...
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Links (1)


John Wilkes

borndied
1725, Oct 171797, Dec 26
an English radical, journalist, and politician. He was first elected Member of Parliament in 1757. In the Middlesex election dispute, he fought for the right of his voters—rather than the House of Commons—to determine their representatives. In 1768 angry protests of his supporters were suppressed in the St George's Fields Massacre. In 1771, he was instru...
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Timeline (4)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

John Wilkins

bornactivedied
1614, Feb 141637-16681672, Nov 19
an Anglican clergyman, natural philosopher and author, and was one of the founders of the Royal Society. He was Bishop of Chester from 1668 until his death. He is particularly known for An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (1668) in which, amongst other things, he proposed a universal language and a decimal system of measures which ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Performers

Marianne von Willemer

borndied
1784, Nov 201860, Dec 6
an Austrian actress and dancer best known for her relationship with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and her appearance in his poetry. He immortalised her in the Buch Suleika of his late work West-östlicher Diwan; she later revealed that several of its p...
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Links (3)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Andrew Willet

borndied
15621621, Dec 4
an English clergyman and controversialist. A prolific writer, he is known for his anti-papal works. His views were Calvinist, conforming and non-separatist, and he appeared as a witness against Edward Dering before the Star-chamber. Joseph Hall (who knew him well)...
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Links (1)


Francis Williams

borndied
17001771
a scholar and poet born in Kingston, Jamaica. Francis Williams was born around 1700 to John and Dorothy Williams, a free black couple in Jamaica. John Williams had been freed by the will of his former master and within 10 years was able to acquire property. As free blacks the Williams family were increasingly in the minority as Jamaica's sugar industry, whic...
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Timeline (1)Links (1)


Nathaniel Williams

borndied
1656/571679 ca
a Welsh writer. He wrote two books: A Pindaric Elegy on the famous Physician Dr. Willis (published in 1675) and Imago Saeculi or the Image of the Age represented in four Characters, viz. the ambitious Statesman, insatiable Miser, atheistic Gallant, and factious Schismatic (published the following year).
Links (1)


Roger Williams

bornactivedied
1603, Dec 21 ca1628-16761683, Jan-Mar
a Puritan, an English Reformed theologian, and later a Reformed Baptist who was expelled by the Puritan leaders from the colony of Massachusetts because local officials thought that he was spreading "new and dangerous ideas" to his congregants. Williams fled the Massachusetts colony under the threat of impending arrest and shipment to an English prison; he b...
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Timeline (3)Links (15)Notes (2)


Cross-listed in ClergyScientists

Samuel Williams

borndied
17421817
A Vermont minister, scientist, and philosophy professor, Williams believed the social contract should take a new form in America, where government derived its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. Williams expressed his ideas in two major works, The Natural and Civil History of the State of Vermont (1795) and Philosophical Lectures on the Constitution...
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Cross-listed in Artists

William Williams [2]

borndied
17271791, Apr 27
an English/American painter who wrote a novel, The Journal of Llewellin Penrose, Seaman, considered by many to be the first American novel. He began living in Philadelphia around 1747 after time at sea. In Philadelphia he was instrumental in building America's first theater, maintained an art studio at "The Sign of Hogarth's Head" and taught art to a young <...
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Links (1)


William Williams Pantycelyn

aka: William Williams, William Pantycelyn
borndied
1717, Feb 11 ca1791, Jan 11
generally acknowledged as Wales' most famous hymn writer. As a writer of both poetry and prose, he is today considered one of the greatest literary figures of Wales. He was, however, equally distinguished in the world of religion, as one of the key leaders of the 18th century Welsh Methodist revival, along with Howell Harris and Daniel Rowland.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

John Willis

borndied
1575 ca1625, Nov 28
a British clergyman, stenographer and mnemonician. He developed a simple style of shorthand based on the work by Timothy Bright. In 1602 he published The Art of Stenographie, which was a new and more practicable system to capture speech in short writing. His shorthand was based on a system of arbitrary equivalent symbols, one for each single letter of the al...
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Links (1)


John Wilmot

aka: 2nd Earl of Rochester
borndied
16471680
an English poet and courtier of King Charles II's Restoration court. The Restoration reacted against the "spiritual authoritarianism" of the Puritan era. Rochester was the embodiment of the new era, and he is as well known for his rakish lifestyle as his poetry, although the two were often interlinked.
Links (1)


Arthur Wilson

borndied
1595, Dec1652
a 17th-century English playwright, historian and poet. Born a commoner, he worked as a gentleman-in-waiting and steward to several powerful Parliamentarians in the period up to the English Civil War. He is remembered as a minor playwright, who wrote several plays for London's Blackfriars Theatre, and as the author of The History of Great Britain, being th...
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Links (1)


Thomas Wilson [1]

borndied
15241581
an English diplomat, judge, and privy councillor in the government of Elizabeth I. He is now remembered for his Logique and The Arte of Rhetorique. They have been called "the first complete works on logic and rhetoric in English." He also wrote A Discourse upon Usury by way of Dialogue and Orations, and he was the first to publish a translation of Demosthene...
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Links (1)


Sir Thomas Wilson [2]

borndied
1560 ca1629
an English official. He is known as a government agent, Member of Parliament, Keeper of the Records, translator and author. Wilson translated from the Spanish Jorge de Montemayor's Diana, a romance, while abroad in 1596. He compiled a Collection of Divers Matters concerning the Marriages of Princes' Children. He compiled a collection of commercial treaties w...
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Links (1)


Jakob Wimpfeling

borndied
1450, Jul 251528, Nov 17
a Renaissance humanist and theologian. Wimpfeling's literary career began with a few publications in which he urged the more frequent holding of synods, the veneration of the Blessed Virgin, and an improvement of the discipline of the clergy.
Links (1)


Edmund Wingate

borndied
15961656
an English mathematical and legal writer, one of the first to publish in the 1620s on the principle of the slide rule, and later the author of some popular expository works. He was also a Member of Parliament during the Interregnum.
Links (1)


Edward Winslow

borndied
15951655
a Separatist who traveled on the Mayflower in 1620. He was one of several senior leaders on the ship and also later at Plymouth Colony. He was the author of several important pamphlets, including Good Newes from New England and co-wrote with William Bradford ...
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Links (1)


William Winstanley [1]

borndied
1628 ca1698
an English poet and compiler of biographies. He published under his own name a poem called 'Walden Bacchanals,' and he wrote an elegy on Anne, wife of Samuel Gibs of Newman Hall, Essex (Muses' Cabinet). There is little doubt that most of the almanacs and chapbooks issued from 1662 onwards under the pseudonym of "Poor Robin" came from his pen. He was a staunc...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Artists

George Winter

borndied
18101876
an English-born American artist who was noted for his portraits of Native Americans and other figures of the American frontier. In addition to Winter’s paintings there is a large manuscript collection of Winter’s papers that has important historic value due to its intimate description of the Wabash Indians. Winter’s first-hand writings about the reloca...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in GovernanceLegal

John Winthrop [2]

borndied
1587/88, Jan 121649, Mar 26
an English Puritan lawyer and one of the leading figures in founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the second major settlement in New England, following Plymouth Colony. Winthrop led the first large wave of immigrants from England in 1630 and served as governor for 12 of the colony's first 20 years. His writings and vision of the colony as a Puritan "city up...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Ninian Winzet

borndied
15181592
a Scottish Catholic priest and polemical writer. In his first work, Certaine Tractates (three in number), printed in 1562, he rates his fellow clergy for negligence and sin, invites replies from Knox regarding his authority as minister and his share in the new ecclesiastical constitution, and protests against the interference with Catholic burgesses by the m...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in GovernanceLegal

William Wirt

bornactivedied
1772, Nov 81792-18341834, Feb 18
an American author and statesman who is credited with turning the position of United States Attorney General into one of influence. He was the longest serving Attorney General in U.S. history. He was also the Anti-Masonic nominee for president in the 1832 election. Wirt grew up in Maryland but pursued a legal career in Virginia, passing the Virginia bar in 1...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Performers

John Wisden

borndied
1826, Sep 51884, Apr 5
an English cricketer who played 187 first-class cricket matches for three English county cricket teams, Kent, Middlesex and Sussex. He is now best known for launching the eponymous Wisden Cricketers' Almanack in 1864, the year after he retired from first-class cricket.
Timeline (1)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

George Wishart

borndied
15991671
a Scottish Anglican bishop and author. A strong supporter of episcopacy, he fled to England in 1639. He was imprisoned in Newcastle upon Tyne during the Bishops' Wars for his exploits with the Great Montrose, but freed after the Battle of Kilsyth. In 1650 Montrose was executed with a copy of Wishart's biography of him tied around his neck.
Links (1)


George Wither

borndied
15881667
an English poet, pamphleteer, and satirist. He was a prolific writer who adopted a deliberate plainness of style; he was several times imprisoned. His extant writings number over a hundred. Wither wrote, generally, in a pure English idiom, and preferred the reputation of rusticity.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyGovernance

John Witherspoon

bornactivedied
1723, Feb 51745-17811794, Nov 15
a Scots Presbyterian minister and a signatory of the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of New Jersey. During his two pastorates he wrote three well-known works on theology. His 1776 sermon "The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men" was published in many editions.
Timeline (1)Links (19)Notes (2)


Cross-listed in GovernanceCartographers

Nicolaes Witsen

aka: Nicolaas Witsen
borndied
1641, May 81717, Aug 10
a Dutch statesman who was mayor of Amsterdam thirteen times, between 1682-1706. In 1693 he became administrator of the VOC. In 1689 he was extraordinary-ambassador to the English court, and became Fellow of the Royal Society. In his free time he was cartographer, maritime writer, and an authority on shipbuilding. His books on the subject are important source...
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Timeline (1)Links (1)


Charles Wolfe

borndied
17911823
an Irish poet, chiefly remembered for "The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna" which achieved popularity in 19th century poetry anthologies. Wolfe's only volume of verse, Poetical Remains appeared in 1825.
Links (1)


Christian Wolff

aka: Wolf, Wolfius
borndied
1679, Jan 241754, Apr 9
a German philosopher. Wolff was the most eminent German philosopher between Leibniz and Kant. His main achievement was a complete oeuvre on almost every scholarly subject of his time, displayed and unfolded according to his demonstrative-deductive, mathematical method, which perhaps represents the peak of Enlightenment rationality in Germany. The mountain Mo...
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Links (1)


Johannes Wolleb

aka: Wollebius
borndied
15891629
a Swiss Protestant theologian. He was a student of Amandus Polanus, and followed in the tradition of a Reformed scholasticism, a formal statement of the views arising from the Protestant Reformation. The Compendium Theologiae Christianae of 1626 is his major work.
Links (1)


Mary Wollstonecraft

borndied
1759, Apr 271797, Sep 10
an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but...
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Timeline (1)Links (1)


Anthony Wood

aka: Anthony à Wood
borndied
1632, Dec 171695, Nov 28
an English antiquary. Wood began systematically to copy monumental inscriptions and to search for antiquities in the city and neighbourhood. In 1674 he published Historia, et antiquitates Universitatis Oxoniensis in two folio volumes.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Architects

John Wood the Elder

bornactivedied
17041725-17541754, May 23
an English architect, working mainly in Bath. In 1740 he surveyed Stonehenge and the Stanton Drew stone circles. He later wrote extensively about Bladud and Neo-Druidism. Because of some of his designs he is also thought to have been involved in the early years of Freemasonry. His notable work in Bath included: St John's Hospital, Queen Square, Prior Park, T...
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Links (5)


Charles Woodmason

borndied
1720 ca1789, Mar
an author, poet, Anglican clergyman, American loyalist, and West Gallery psalmodist. He is best remembered for his journal documenting life on the South Carolina frontier in the late 1760s, and for his role as a leader of the South Carolina Regulator movement.
Links (1)


Wilford Woodruff

borndied
1807, Mar 11898, Sep 2
the fourth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from 1889 until his death. Woodruff's large collection of diaries provides an important record of Latter Day Saint history. He kept a daily record of his life and activities within the LDS Church, beginning with his baptism in 1833. Matthias F. Cowley, editor of his publishe...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Educators

Lewis Woodson

borndied
1806, Jan1878, Jan
an educator, minister, writer, and abolitionist. He was an early leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in Ohio and Pennsylvania. In 1829 Woodson began an active life of writing to influence public policy, with a letter published by Freedom's Journal, an early African-American newspaper.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Scientists

John Woodward

borndied
1665, May 11728, Apr 25
an English naturalist, antiquarian and geologist, and founder by bequest of the Woodwardian Professorship of Geology at Cambridge University. Though a leading supporter of the importance of observation and experiment in what we now call science, few of his theories have survived. While still a student he became interested in botany and natural history, and d...
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Links (1)


John Woolman

bornactivedied
1720, Oct 191755-17721772, Oct 7
a North American merchant, tailor, journalist, and itinerant Quaker preacher, and an early abolitionist in the colonial era. Based in Mount Holly, New Jersey, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he traveled through frontier areas of British North America to preach Quaker beliefs, and advocate against slavery and the slave trade, cruelty to animals, economic inj...
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Links (2)Notes (1)


Cross-listed in Sculptors

Thomas Woolner

bornactivedied
1825, Dec 171843-1880s1892, Oct 7
an English sculptor and poet who was one of the founder-members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was the only sculptor among the original members.
Links (1)


Dorothy Wordsworth

borndied
17711855
an English author, poet and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close all their lives. Wordsworth had no ambitions to be an author, and her writings consist only of series of letters, diary entries, poems a...
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Links (1)


William Wordsworth

bornactivedied
1770, Apr 71787-18471850, Apr 23
a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798). Wordsworth's magnum opus is The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his ea...
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Timeline (3)Links (19)


Edward Worsley

borndied
16051676, Sep 2
an English Jesuit writer and professor. His chief works are mostly written against Edward Stillingfleet. In Liège, he became a professor of philosophy, logic, and Scripture, winning a great reputation for talent and erudition.
Links (1)


Sir Francis Wortley

aka: 1st Baronet
borndied
15911652
a poet and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1624 and 1626. He supported the Royalist cause in the English Civil War. He supported Charles II in the Siege of Hull, and was captured in 1644 at Wotton House, near Wakefield and imprisoned in the Tower of London from 1644 to 1648.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Governance

Henry Wotton

bornactivedied
1568, Mar 301588-16331639, Dec
an English author, diplomat and politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1614 and 1625. Of 25 poems printed in Reliquiae Wottonianae 15 are Wotton's. During his lifetime he published two works.
Links (14)


Matthew Wren

borndied
1629, Aug 201672, Jun 14
an English politician and writer. He is now known as an opponent of James Harrington, and a monarchist who made qualified use of the ideas of Thomas Hobbes. He was fatally injured accompanying the duke at the Battle of Solebay in 1672 and died on his return to G...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in SculptorsArtists

Patience Wright

bornactivedied
17251770s-17851786, Mar 23
the first recognized American-born sculptor. She chiefly created wax figures of people. She loved to write poetry and was also a painter. She was patronized by George III, and sculpted him and other members of British royalty and nobility, but fell from royal favor...
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Links (1)


Thomas Wright [1]

bornactivedied
unknown1600sunknown
an English writer, a protégé of Henry Wriothesley, third earl of Southampton, who had travelled in Italy. He published two works in the 1600s; one was reprinted in the 1620s and 1630s.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in ComposersPerformers

Mary Ann Wrighten

borndied
17511796
an English singer, actress and composer. In 1784 Wrighten published Four Ballads, as well as being credited for a few additional songs. She also wrote an autobiography entitled An Apology for he Life and Conduct of Mrs Mary Wrighten, Late a Favourite Actress and Singer, of Drury Lane Theatre, and Vauxhall Gardens.
Links (1)


Lady Mary Wroth

borndied
15871651 ca
an English poet of the Renaissance. A member of a distinguished literary family, Lady Wroth was among the first female British writers to have achieved an enduring reputation. She is perhaps best known for having written The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania, the first extant prose romance by an English woman, and for Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, the second kn...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Composers

Caroline Wuiet

borndied
17661835
a French journalist, novelist and composer, best known for opera. Wuiet began her career as a composer and librettist at the age of eighteen with Le trompeur tromp, but was disappointed that the opera was not performed. Under the French Directory, Wuiet began composing again and enjoyed more success with sonatas. During this time, she also established...
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Links (1)


George Wyatt

borndied
15531624
a sixteenth-century writer. He was the first biographer of Henry VIII's second queen, Anne Boleyn. His grandfather, Thomas Wyatt the Elder, had been a cousin and earl...
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Links (1)


Thomas Wyatt

borndied
15031542, Oct 11
a 16th-century English ambassador and lyrical poet. He is credited with introducing the sonnet into English literature. None of Wyatt's poems were published during his lifetime—the first book to feature his verse, Richard Tottel's Miscellany of 1557, was pri...
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Links (1)Gallery (1)


William Wycherley

bornactivedied
1641 ca1659-16971716, Jan 1
an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for the plays The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer. Wycherley spent some years of his adolescence in France, where he was sent, at fifteen, to be educated on the banks of the Charente. While in France, Wycherley converted to Roman Catholicism. He returned to England shortly before the ...
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Links (6)


Robert Wydow

borndied
1446 ca1505
an English poet, church musician, and religious figure. Wydow's contemporaries held him in high esteem as a poet and musician. Raphael Holinshed called him "an excellent poet", and John Leland described him as "easily the finest" of Latin authors of the time...
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Ludwig Wysber

borndied
1817unknown
a Jewish Hungarian journalist and author. At the outbreak of the March Movement in 1848, he obtained permission to publish Der Patriot, while Julian Chownitz (or Chowanetz), a Jew who had been active as a revolutionist, was given permission to publish Die Opposition. These two journals represented Kossuth's party, and acquired considerable influence.
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