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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 AstronomersInventorsScientists

Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf

borndied
15261585
a Muslim polymath active in the Ottoman Empire. He was the author of more than ninety books on a wide variety of subjects, including astronomy, clocks, engineering, mathematics, mechanics, optics and natural philosophy. In 1574 the Ottoman Sultan Murad III invited Taqi ad-Din to build the Istanbul observatory. Using his exceptional knowledge in the mechanica...
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Cross-listed in Educators

James Mabbe

borndied
15721642
an English scholar and poet, and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He was involved in translations from Spanish, in particular of some of the work of Miguel de Cervantes. He made a translation, in 1622, of the Picaresque novel by Mateo Alemán, Guzm...
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Diarmaid Mac an Bhaird

bornactivedied
unknown1670 caunknown
an Irish poet. A son of Laoiseach Mac an Bhaird, Diarmaid was a member of the Clann Mac an Bhaird and one of the last classically trained bardic file (poet). He appears to have lived in what is now County Monaghan though he clearly had associations with Clandeboye, as a poem he addressed to Cormac O Neill is preserved in Leabhar Cloinne Aodha Buidhe. He is a...
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Baothghalach Mor Mac Aodhagain

aka: Baothghalach Mór Mac Aodhagáin
borndied
15501600
an Irish poet. Reputedly from Duniry, he was of the Mac Aodhagáin clan of poets. In his lifetime, his family were keepers of Leabhar Breac. His poems were edited by Lambert McKenna in 1939.
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Fiachra Mac Bradaigh

aka: Mac Brádaigh
borndied
1690 ca1760 ca
an Irish poet and scribe, Mac Brádaigh was a descendant of one of the leading families of Breifne. A Gaelic poet and one of the finest products of, and teachers in, the hedge schools before the introduction of formal education. He is buried in Dunsandle in County Galway, his adopted home.
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Diarmuid Mac Bruideadha

borndied
unknown1563
an Irish poet. Not much is known about his life. Diarmuid was a member of the Mac Bruideadha brehon family, based at Ballybrody, parish of Dysert, barony of Inchiquin, County Clare. Other branches were located at Knockanalban in Ibrickane and Lettermoylan in Inchiquin.
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Maoilin Mac Bruideadha

aka: Mac Brody, Brody.
borndied
unknown1582
an Irish poet. Very little is known about his life. Maoilin succeeded his brother, Diarmuid Mac Bruideadha, as head of the family and ollamh to O Brian. He was succeeded by his son, Maoilin Óg.
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Aodh Mac Cathmhaoil

borndied
15711626, Sep 22
an Irish Franciscan theologian and Archbishop of Armagh. He was known by Irish speakers at Louvain by the honorary name Aodh Mac Aingil ("Mac Aingil" is Irish for "Son of an Angel"), and it was under this title that he published the Irish work Scáthán Shacramuinte na hAthridhe.
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Cormac Mac Con Midhe

borndied
unknown1627
an early Modern Irish poet. Manuscript H.5.6, held at Trinity College, Dublin, contains a poem of 24 stanzas apparently written by Mac Con Midhe for Toirealach Ó Néill of Sliocht Airt Óig of Tyrone and his wife, Sorcha. It survives in another copy of 188 lines in MS 1291 (formerly H.1.17), also in Trinity, both been made by Hugh O'Daly in the middle 18th ...
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Seamus Mac Cruitin

aka: Mac Cruitín
borndied
18151870, Sep 1
a 19th-century Irish poet and bard. His works included translations of Brian Merriman's The Midnight Court, collected songs and poems for Eugene O'Curry, translations and versions for O'Brien, in addition to composing original material.
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Aodh Mac Donaill

aka: Mac Dónaill
borndied
18021867
a scribe from County Meath. Among the works he transcribed was Seachrán Charn tSiadhail by Tarlach Rua Mac Dónaill. It is now contained in a manuscript house in the Public Library, Belfast.
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Tarlach Rua Mac Donaill

aka: Mac Dónaill
borndied
1710 ca1740 ca
an Irish poet, active in the early 18th century. Tarlach Rua Mac Dónaill was from the townland of Derrylasky in the parish of Donaghmore, County Tyrone. He was the author of Seachrán Charn tSiadhail, which became extremely popular in Gaelic Ulster. It survived in numerous oral traditions, two manuscripts, and versions run to over fifty seven verses of eigh...
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Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh

aka: Dubhaltach Óg mac Giolla Íosa Mór mac Dubhaltach Mór Mac Fhirbhisigh, Duald Mac Firbis, Dudly Ferbisie, Dualdus Firbissius
bornactivedied
unknown1640-1671unknown
an Irish scribe, translator, historian and genealogist. He was one of the last traditionally trained Irish Gaelic scholars, and was a member of the Clan MacFhirbhisigh, a leading family of northern Connacht. His best-known work is the Leabhar na nGenealach, which was published in 2004 as The Great Book of Irish Genealogies, more than 300 years after it had b...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Brian Mac Giolla Phadraig

aka: Mac Giolla Phádraig
borndied
1580 ca1653
an Irish poet and priest. Only a handful of his poems are extant. A cry of despair against the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, and its consequences for the world and class to which he belonged, his Faisean Chláir Éibhir bears a striking resemblance to the poetry of the great Dáibhí Ó Bruadair.
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Seon Mac Solaidh

aka: Sean or John Mac Solly
bornactivedied
unknown1720sunknown
an Irish poet and scribe. A native of Harmanstown, parish of Stackallen, County Meath, Paul Walsh (priest) described him as follows: "He cultivated Irish literature, not, however, as an original author. He is known as a diligent copier of MSS., and as a friend of Tadhg O Neachtain, the lexico-grapher. The two men were joint scribes of a MS. which Edward O Re...
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Cross-listed in Governance

Thomas Babington Macaulay

aka: 1st Baron Macaulay
bornactivedied
1800, Oct 251825-18591859, Dec 28
a British historian and Whig politician. He wrote extensively as an essayist and reviewer; his books on British history have been hailed as literary masterpieces. Macaulay held political office as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and the Paymaster-General between 1846 and 1848. He played a major role in introducing English and western concepts to ...
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Evan MacColl

borndied
18081898
a Scots-Canadian Gaelic poet who also produced poems in English. He was known as the Clarsair-nam-beann (literally the "Harper of the Mountains") or the Mountain Minstrel. Later he became known as "the Gaelic Bard of Canada".
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Cross-listed in Clergy

George MacDonald

borndied
18241905
a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister. He was a pioneering figure in the field of fantasy literature and the mentor of fellow writer Lewis Carroll. His writings have been cited as a major literary influence by many notable authors including W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Walter de la Mare, E. Nesbit and Madeleine L'Engle.
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Cross-listed in Composers

George Alexander Macfarren

borndied
1813, Mar 21887, Oct 31
an English composer and musicologist. His oratorios brought him some popular and critical success. Amongst his compositions of light music is a Romance and Barcarole for Concertina and Fortepiano written in 1856. His theoretical works include an analysis of Lud...
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Cross-listed in Sculptors

Joaquim Machado de Castro

bornactivedied
1731, Jun 191770s-18221822, Nov 17
one of Portugal's foremost sculptors, and a celebrated figure throughout Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He wrote extensively on his works and the theory behind them.
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Niccolo Machiavelli

aka: Niccolò
borndied
1469, May 31527, Jun 21
an Italian Renaissance historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer. He has often been called the founder of modern political science. He was for many years a senior official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. His personal corresponde...
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Cross-listed in Commerce

Henry Machyn

borndied
1496/981563
an English clothier and diarist in 16th century London. Machyn's Chronicle, which was written between 1550 and 1563, is primarily concerned with public events: changes on the throne, state visits, insurrections, executions and festivities. Machyn wrote his diary during a turbulent period in England: the Reformation, initiated by more
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Charles Mackay

borndied
1814, Mar 271889, Dec 24
a Scottish poet, journalist, author, anthologist, novelist, and songwriter, remembered mainly for his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. In 1828 he was placed by his father at a school in Brussels, on the Boulevard de Namur, and studied languages. In 1830 he was engaged as a private secretary to William Cockerill, the iron...
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Cross-listed in Performers

Charles Macklin

aka: Cathal MacLochlainn
borndied
1690, Sep 261797, Jul 11
an Irish actor and dramatist who performed extensively at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Macklin revolutionised theatre in the 18th century by introducing a "natural style" of acting. He is also famous for killing a man in a fight over a wig at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Born in County Donegal in Ulster in the north of Ireland, brought up in Dublin, wher...
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Cross-listed in ScientistsCartographersCommerce

William Maclure

bornactivedied
1763, Oct 271782-18271840, Mar 23
an Americanized Scottish geologist, cartographer and philanthropist. He is known as the 'father of American geology' and as a social experimenter on new types of community life, collaborating with British social reformer Robert Owen, (1771–1854), in Indiana, Un...
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Aindrais MacMarcuis

bornactivedied
unknown1600sunknown
an Irish poet. There is little information available about his life or career. MacMarcuis is mainly known for This Night Sees Ireland Desolate, a lament concerning the Flight of the Earls. John Montague published a version of it in the Faber Book of Irish Verse in 1974.
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Hector Macneill

borndied
1746, Oct 221818, Mar 15
a Scots poet and song-writer. a Scottish poet born near Roslin, Midlothian, Scotland. Macneill had been the son of a poor army captain and went to work as a clerk in 1760 at the age of fourteen. Soon, he was sent to the West Indies and served as assistant secretary from 1780 to 1786. After he returned to Scotland, he wrote various political pamphlets, two no...
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James Macpherson

borndied
1736, Oct 271796, Feb 17
a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector and politician, known as the "translator" of the Ossian cycle of poems. He was the first Scottish poet to gain an international reputation. He went on to write several historical works, the most important of which was Original Papers, containing the Secret History of Great Britain from the Restoration to the Access...
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Samuel Madden

borndied
16861765
an Irish author. His works include Themistocles; The Lover of His Country, Reflections and Resolutions Proper for the Gentlemen of Ireland, and Memoirs of the Twentieth Century. Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote of him, "His was a name which Ireland ought to honour." He...
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Carlo Maggi

borndied
unknown1587 ca
a Venetian citizen ("cittadino originario") and traveller. During 1568–1573, he visited much of the Near East, then under Ottoman control, including the city of Jerusalem, where he was made a knight of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, and he was captured by the Turks during the siege of the city of Nicosia in the Cyprus War of 1570-1571, being able to free...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Olaus Magnus

borndied
1490, Oct1557, Aug 1
a Swedish writer and Catholic ecclesiastic, presiding as Archbishop of Uppsala and Primate of Sweden. He is best remembered as the author of the famous Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (History of the Northern Peoples), printed in Rome 1555, a patriotic work of folklore and history which long remained for the rest of Europe the authority on Swedish mat...
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Louis Maigret

aka: Meigret
bornactivedied
unknown1530s-1550sunknown
the author of the Tretté de la Grammaire française, which was published in 1550. This was the first grammatical description of French. His treatise is part of a wider current spelling simplification of the research granting pronunciation. However, it could not impose, for lack of a linguistic authority in the sixteenth century. Faced with the impossibility...
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Chevalier de Mailly

borndied
unknown1724
the author of literary fairy tales, imaginary adventures, racy novels and romances, often published anonymously by necessity, sometimes published outside France. He appears to have become embroiled in a gay scandal in 1682, in which an aristocratic underground circle practicing le vice italien was uncovered. The supposed Confrérie italienne was even ascribe...
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Alexander Ziskind Maimon

borndied
1809, Jul 181887, Jul 12
a Lithuanian Jewish author and scholar of the Talmud and Mishnah.Maimon was born in Seirijai, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. His commentaries on biblical literature, Mishnah, Talmud and Halacha were publicized from his younger years and throughout his life. He was a writer for "HaMagid" Hebrew newspaper, known by the acronym of his and his fathe...
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Cross-listed in PiratesLegal

Sir Henry Mainwaring

aka: The Dread Pirate
bornactivedied
15871610-16161653
an English lawyer, soldier, author, seaman and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1621 to 1622. He was for a time a pirate based in Newfoundland and then a naval officer with the Royal Navy. He supported the Royalist cause in the English Civil War.
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Jean Mairet

borndied
1604, May 101686, Jan 31
a classical French dramatist who wrote both tragedies and comedies. He was born at Besançon, and went to Paris to study at the Collège des Grassins about 1625. In that year he produced his first piece Chryséide et Arimand. In 1634 he produced his masterpiece, Sophonisbe, which marks, in its observance of the rules, the first to be staged of the classical ...
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Cross-listed in Legal

Joseph de Maistre

borndied
1753, Apr 11821, Feb 26
a Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat. He defended hierarchical societies and a monarchical State in the period immediately following the French Revolution. Maistre was a subject of the King of Piedmont-Sardinia, whom he served as member of the Savoy Senate (1787–1792), ambassador to Russia (1803–1817), and minister of state to the court i...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Nicolas Malebranche

borndied
1638, Aug 61715, Oct 13
a French Oratorian priest and rationalist philosopher. In his works, he sought to synthesize the thought of St. Augustine and Rene Descartes, in order to demonstrate the active role of God in every aspect of the world. Malebranche is best known for his doctrine...
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Francois de Malherbe

aka: François
borndied
15551628, Oct 16
a French poet, critic, and translator. Malherbe exercised, or at least indicated the exercise of, a great and enduring effect upon French literature, though not exactly a wholly beneficial one. From the time of Malherbe dates the gradual development of the poetic rules of "Classicism" that would dominate until the Romantics. The critical and restraining tend...
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David Mallet

borndied
1705 ca1765
a Scottish dramatist. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, and went to London in 1723 to work as a private tutor. There he became friendly with Alexander Pope, James Thomson, and other literary figures including Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke. H...
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Jacques Mallet du Pan

borndied
17491800, May 10
a French journalist, who took up the Royalist cause during the French Revolution. He was educated at Geneva, and through the influence of Voltaire obtained a professorship at Cassel. He soon, however, resigned this post, and going to London joined HSN Linguet in the ...
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Claude de Malleville

borndied
15971647
a French poet and one of the founding members of the Académie française in 1634. In his youth, Malleville is a member of the inner circle of Illustrious Bergers, a circle of poets and scholars Catholic ronsardiens in which he is identified for Damon. Member of the circle of Conrart and Mlle de Gournay, accustomed to the Hotel de Rambouillet, Malleville con...
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Goffredo Mameli

borndied
18271849
an Italian patriot, poet, and writer was a notable figure in the Italian Risorgimento. He is also the author of the lyrics of Il Canto degli Italiani, the national anthem. The achievements of Mameli's very short life are concentrated in only two years, during which time he played major parts in insurrectional movements and the Risorgimento. In 1847 Mameli jo...
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Cross-listed in Inventors

George William Manby

borndied
1765, Nov 281854, Nov 18
an English author and inventor. He designed an apparatus for saving life from shipwrecks and also the first modern form of fire extinguisher. He married in 1793 and inherited his wife's family's estates, but left her in 1801 after being shot by her lover and moved to Clifton, Bristol. There, he published several books. He also invented the Manby Mortar, late...
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Bernard Mandeville

aka: Bernard de Mandeville
borndied
1670, Nov 151733, Jan 21
an Anglo-Dutch philosopher, political economist and satirist. Born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, he lived most of his life in England and used English for most of his published works. He became famous for The Fable of the Bees. On leaving the Erasmus school at Rotterdam he showed his ability by an Oratio scholastica de medicina (1685), and at Leiden University ...
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James Clarence Mangan

borndied
1803, May 11849, Jun 20
an Irish poet. Mangan began submitting verses to Dublin publications, the first being published in 1818. From 1820 he adopted the middle name Clarence. In 1830 he began producing translations – generally free interpretations rather than strict transliterations -- from German, a language he had taught himself. Of interest are his translations of more
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Cross-listed in Physicians

Jean-Jacques Manget

aka: Johann Jacob Mangetus
borndied
16521742
a Genevan physician and writer. He was an assiduous compiler of previous medical literature. He graduated as a physician at the University of Valence in 1678. Later he became the Dean of the Valence medical faculty. Frederick III, Elector of Brandenburg made Manget his personal physician in 1699. Manget wrote in particular a major treatise on the bubonic pla...
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Delarivier Manley

borndied
1667 ca1724, Jul 24
an English author, playwright, and political pamphleteer. Manley's satirical attacks on the Whigs at one point resulted in payment from the then Prime Minister Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer. Her career as an author effectively began with the publication of her New Atalantis in 1709, a work that spotted present British politics on the fabulou...
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William L. Manly

bornactivedied
1820, Apr 61849-18941903, Feb 5
an American pioneer of the mid-19th century. He was first a fur hunter, a guide of Westward bound caravans, a seeker of gold and then a farmer and writer in his later years. He wrote an autobiography, first published with the title From Vermont to California, then a second edition with the title Death Valley in '49, that tells of the pioneer experience in Am...
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Cross-listed in Scientists

Charles Blachford Mansfield

borndied
1819, May 81855, Feb 26
a British chemist and author. Benzol, its Nature and Utility (1849) was a pamphlet. Mansfield's major work in chemistry was the Theory of Salts, completed in 1855. In September 1850 a balloon machine constructed at Paris led to his Aerial Navigation. Mansfield wrote several papers in Politics for the People, edited by Maurice and John Malcolm Forbes Ludlow, ...
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Cross-listed in Commerce

Aldus Manutius the Younger

borndied
1547, Feb 131597, Oct 28
the grandson of Aldus Manutius and son of Paulus Manutius. He was the last member of the Manuzio family to be active in the Aldine Press that his grandfather founded At eleven a work was published under his name, Eleganze della lingua Latina e toscana. Manutius the Younger was appointed to manage the Venice press while his father, Paulus Manutius, was away ...
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John Manwood

borndied
unknown1610
a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, gamekeeper of Waltham Forest, and Justice in Eyre of the New Forest under Elizabeth I of England. He was a close relative, probably a nephew, of Sir Roger Manwood, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer in the reign of Elizabeth. Manwood's...
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Alessandro Manzoni

borndied
1785, Mar 71873, May 22
an Italian poet and novelist. He is famous for the novel The Betrothed (orig. Italian: I Promessi Sposi) (1840), generally ranked among the masterpieces of world literature. The novel is also a symbol of the Italian Risorgimento, both for its patriotic message and because it was a fundamental milestone in the development of the modern, unified Italian langua...
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Matthieu Marais

borndied
16641737, Jun 21
a French jurist and writer. Legal advocate at the Parlement of Paris, he was one of the luminaries of the bar during his times. A friend of Pierre Bayle and Henry de Boulainviller, he collaborated on the Dictionnaire Historique, and wrote the articles "Henri III", "Henri, duc de Guise", "Marguerite, reine de Navarre", etc. Bound up with the president Jean Bo...
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Cross-listed in PhysiciansScientists

Jean-Paul Marat

borndied
1743, May 241793, Jul 13
a French political theorist, physician, and scientist who was a radical journalist and politician during the French Revolution. His journalism became renowned for its fierce tone, uncompromising stance towards the new leaders and institutions of the revolution, and advocacy of basic human rights for the poorest members of society, yet calling for prisoners o...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Francis Marbury

aka: Merbury
borndied
15551611
a Cambridge-educated English cleric, schoolmaster and playwright. He is best known for being the father of Anne Hutchinson, considered the most famous (or infamous) English woman in colonial America. Marbury's most noted work, The Contract of Marriage between Wit and Wisdom was written in 1579 while he was in prison. It was a moral interlude or "wit play", f...
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Cross-listed in PhysiciansScientists

Jan Marek Marci

aka: Johannes Marcus
borndied
1595, Jun 131667, Apr 10
a Bohemian doctor and scientist, rector of the University of Prague, and official physician to the Holy Roman Emperors. The crater Marci on the far side of the Moon is named after him. Marci's studies covered the mechanics of colliding bodies, epilepsy, and the refraction of light, as well as other topics. Marci at some time came into possession of the Voyni...
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Giambattista Marino

borndied
1569, Oct 141625, Mar 26
an Italian poet who was born in Naples. He is most famous for his long epic L'Adone. The Cambridge History of Italian Literature thought him to be "one of the greatest Italian poets of all time". He is considered the founder of the school of Marinism, later called Secentismo, characterised by its use of extravagant and excessive conceits. Marino's conception...
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Cross-listed in Astronomers

Simon Marius

borndied
1573, Jan 201625, Jan 5
a German astronomer. He was born in Gunzenhausen, near Nuremberg, but he spent most of his life in the city of Ansbach. In 1614 Marius published his work Mundus Iovialis describing the planet Jupiter and its moons. Here he claimed to have discovered the planet's four major moons some days before more
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Pierre de Marivaux

borndied
1688, Feb 41763, Feb 12
a French novelist and dramatist. He is considered one of the most important French playwrights of the 18th century, writing numerous comedies for the Comédie-Française and the Comédie-Italienne of Paris. His most important works are Le Triomphe de l'amour, Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard and Les Fausses Confidences. He also published a number of essays and...
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Gervase Markham

aka: Jervis
borndied
1568 ca1637, Feb 3
an English poet and writer. He was best known for his work The English Huswife, Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman, first published in London in 1615. He was acquainted with Latin and several modern languages, and had an exhaustive practical acquaintance with the arts of forestry and agriculture. He was a n...
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Mrs Markham

aka: Elizabeth Penrose
bornactivedied
1780, Aug 31823-18371837, Jan 24
an English writer. The best known of her books was A History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans to the End of the Reign of George III (1823), which went through numerous editions. In 1828, she published a History of France. Both these wo...
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Christopher Marlowe

aka: Kit Marlowe, Marly , Marley, Marlin
bornactivedied
1564, Feb1587-15931593, May 30
an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day. He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabe...
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Xavier Marmier

borndied
1808, Jun 221892, Oct 12
a French author born in Pontarlier, in Doubs. He had a passion for travelling, and this he combined throughout his life with the production of literature. After journeying in Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands, he was attached in 1835 to the Arctic expedition of the Recherche; and after a couple of years at Rennes as professor of foreign literature, he...
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Jean-Francois Marmontel

aka: Jean-François
borndied
1723, Jul 111799, Dec 31
a French historian and writer, a member of the Encyclopediste movement. He was appointed historiographer of France (1771), secretary to the Academy (1783), and professor of history in the Lycée (1786). As a historiographer, Marmontel wrote a history of the regency (1788). Reduced to poverty by the French Revolution, Marmontel retired during the Reign of Ter...
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Clement Marot

aka: Clément
borndied
1496, Nov 231544, Sep 12
a French poet of the Renaissance period. As early as 1514, before the accession of King Francis I, Clément presented to him his Judgment of Minos, and shortly afterward he was either styled or styled himself facteur (poet) de la reine to Queen Claude. In 1519 he was attached to the suite of Marguerite d'Alençon, the king's sister, (later to become Margueri...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Edward Garrard Marsh

borndied
17831862
an English poet and Anglican clergyman. He studied at Wadham College, Oxford, and on graduating became a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. He was a curate at Nuneham, and then bought a chapel in Hampstead. He became Residentiary Canon at Southwell. He was vicar of Sandon, Hertfordshire and then Aylesford, Kent. He was Bampton Lecturer in 1848. While he had co...
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George Perkins Marsh

borndied
1801, Mar 151882, Jul 23
an American diplomat and philologist, is considered by some to be America's first environmentalist and the precursor to the sustainability concept, although "conservationist" would be more accurate. Marsh was an able linguist, able to both speak and write fluently in Swedish and half a dozen other European languages. He was a remarkable philologist for his d...
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Cross-listed in Composers

John Marsh

borndied
1752, May 311828, Oct 31
an English gentleman, composer, diarist and writer. A lawyer by training, he is known to have written at least 350 compositions, including at least 39 symphonies. While today known primarily for his music, he also had strong interest in other fields, including astronomy and philosophy, and wrote books about astronomy, music, religion, and geometry.
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Cross-listed in Clergy

John Marshall [1]

borndied
15341597, Apr 3
an English Roman Catholic priest. He was one of the six companions associated with William Allen in the foundation of the English College at Douai, in 1568. It was during his time at Leuven that Marshall brought out the two major works for which he is known. The first of these, Treatise of the Cross (Antwerp, 1564), was a defence of the honour paid by Cathol...
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Sir John Marsham

aka: 1st Baronet
borndied
1602, Aug 231685, May 25
an English antiquary known as a writer on chronology. He was also a chancery clerk and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1660 to 1661. Marsham had a reputation in his day for his knowledge of history, chronology, and languages. According to Henry Wotto...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Scientists

Luigi Ferdinando Marsili

aka: Marsigli
borndied
1658, Jul 101730, Nov 1
an Italian scholar and eminent natural scientist, who also served as an emissary and soldier. A list of his works, over twenty in number, is given in Niceron's Mémoirs. His principal works are the following: Osservazioni interne al Bosforo Tracio (Rome, 1681); Histoire physique de la mer, translated by Leclerc (Amsterdam, 1725); Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus, ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

John Marston

bornactivedied
1576, Oct 71598-16341634, Jun 25
an English poet, playwright and satirist during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. His career as a writer lasted a decade, and his work is remembered for its energetic and often obscure style, its contributions to the development of a distinctively Jacobean style in poetry, and its idiosyncratic vocabulary. Marston's brief career in literature began ...
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Links (9)


Benjamin Martin

borndied
17041782
a lexicographer who compiled one of the early English dictionaries, the Lingua Britannica Reformata (1749). He also was a lecturer on science and maker of scientific instruments. In 1740, he moved to Fleet Street, near the Royal Society where his hero Newton would often lecture. He began manufacturing Hadley's quadrant (a predecessor to the sextant) and opti...
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Links (1)


Juan Martinez de Ripalda

aka: Martínez de Ripalda
borndied
15941648, Apr 26
a Spanish Jesuit theologian. He taught philosophy at Monforte, theology at Salamanca, and was called from there to the Imperial College of Madrid, where, by royal decree, he taught moral theology. Later he was named censor to the Spanish Inquisition and confessor of Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, the favorite of Philip IV of Spain, whom he follow...
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Links (2)


Cross-listed in GovernanceEducators

Ignac Martinovics

aka: Ignác
borndied
1755, Jul 201795, May 20
a Hungarian scholar, philosopher, writer, secret agent, Freemason and a leader of the Hungarian Jacobin movement. He was condemned to death for high treason and beheaded on 20 May 1795, along with count Jakab Sigray, Ferenc Szentmarjay, József Hajnóczy and others. From 1783 he was a teacher in natural sciences at the University of Lemberg. During his acade...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Governance

Andrew Marvell

borndied
1621, Mar 311678, Aug 16
an English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend of John Milton. His poems range from the love-song "To His Coy Mistress", to...
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Links (1)


Karl Marx

bornactivedied
1818, May 51836-18821883, Mar 14
a philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. Born in Prussia to a middle-class family, he later studied political economy and Hegelian philosophy. As an adult, Marx became stateless and spent much of his life in London, England, where he continued to develop his thought in collaboration with German thinker Friedrich Engels ...
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Timeline (3)Links (19)


Mary Russell Mitford

borndied
1787, Dec 161855, Jan 10
an English author and dramatist. She was born at Alresford in Hampshire. She is best known for Our Village, a series of sketches of village scenes and vividly drawn characters based upon life in Three Mile Cross, a hamlet in the parish of Shinfield, near Reading in Berkshire, where she lived. Mitford was an especially prolific and successful writer in a rang...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Leonard Mascall

borndied
unknown1589, May 10
an English author and translator. His family was from Plumstead, Kent, and he became clerk of the kitchen in the household of Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury. Mascall died at Farnham Royal, Buckinghamshire, and was buried there on 10 May 1589. The clai...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Francis Mason

borndied
1566 ca1621
an English churchman, archdeacon of Norfolk and author of Of the Consecration of the Bishops in the Church of England (1613), a defence of the Church of England and the first serious rebuttal of the Nag's Head Fable put about as denigration of Matthew Parker and Anglican orders. Mason is known for on vigorous defence of the authority of the church of England...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in GovernanceCommerce

George Mason

bornactivedied
1725, Nov 301747-17921792, Oct 7
a Virginia planter and politician, and a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787, one of three delegates who refused to sign the constitution. His writings have been a significant influence on political thought and events, including substantial portions of the Fairfax Resolves of 1774, the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, and his Obj...
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Timeline (1)Links (18)


William Mason [2]

borndied
1724, Feb 121797, Apr 7
an English poet, editor and gardener. In 1747 his poem "Musaeus, a Monody on the Death of Mr. Pope" was published to acclaim and quickly went through several editions. Among his other works are the historical tragedies Elfrida (1752) and Caractacus (1759) (both used in translation as libretti for 18th century operas: Elfrida - Paisiello and LeMoyne, Caractac...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ArtistsComposersLegalPerformers

Stephen C. Massett

aka: Jeemes Pipes of Pipesville
bornactivedied
unknown1840s-1860sunknown
San Francisco's first entertainer, Stephen C. Massett, was the true Bohemian type. He was an artist, with an equal capacity for work and diversion, whose ruling principle was, "If your pocket is light make your heart light to match it; if your coat is torn, laugh while you you patch it." Massett was a "red-faced little Englishman" with a wealth of copper-col...
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Timeline (1)Links (3)


Francois Massialot

aka: François
borndied
16601733
a French chef who served as chef de cuisine (officier de bouche) to various illustrious personages, including Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, the brother of Louis XIV, and his son Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who was first duc de Chartres then the Regent, as well a...
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Links (1)


Guillaume Massieu

borndied
1665, Apr 131722, Sep 26
a French churchman, translator and poet, best known for his Latin verses in praise of the agreeability and benefits of coffee. Guillaume Massieu translated the works of Lucien and the Odes of Pindar. He edited the works of Jacques de Tourreil and wrote essays on Thanksgiving, the Hesperides, the Gorgons and the oaths of Veterans.
Links (1)


Philip Massinger

borndied
15831640, Mar 17
an English dramatist. His finely plotted plays, including A New Way to Pay Old Debts, The City Madam and The Roman Actor, are noted for their satire and realism, and their political and social themes. The supposition that Massinger was a Roman Catholic rests upon three of his plays, The Virgin Martyr (licensed 1620), The Renega...
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Links (10)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Thomas Master

borndied
16031643, Aug 31
an English poet and divine. He also assisted Edward Herbert, Baron Herbert of Cherbury, in his writing of the Life of Henry VIII. He was educated at Cirencester Grammar School and Winchester College. There he obtained a scholarship to New College, Oxford, where he ...
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Links (1)


Anna Catharina Materna

borndied
17311757
a Danish actor and playwright. She belonged to the first pioneer-troupe of actors at the Royal Danish Theatre, and later became one of the first female playwrights to have her plays performed there. She joined the theatre in 1748 when it advertised for female actors, which were in short supply for the newly opened national stage in Copenhagen. It was unusua...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyScientists

Cotton Mather

bornactivedied
1663, Feb 121685-17261728, Feb 13
a socially and politically influential New England Puritan minister, prolific author, and pamphleteer. Known for his vigorous support for the Salem witch trials, he also left a scientific legacy due to his hybridization experiments and his promotion of inoculation for disease prevention. He was subsequently denied the Presidency of Harvard College which his ...
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Timeline (1)Links (16)


Matsuo Basho

bornactivedied
16441662-16941694
the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bash? was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest master of haiku (then called hokku). Matsuo Bash?'s poetry is internationally renowned; and, in Japan, many of his poems are reproduced on mo...
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Timeline (1)Links (1)


Cross-listed in ComposersPerformers

Johann Mattheson

borndied
1681, Sep 281764, Apr 17
a German composer, singer, writer, lexicographer, diplomat and music theorist. Mattheson is mainly famous as a music theorist. He was the most abundant writer on performance practice, theatrical style, and harmony of the German Baroque. He is particularly important for his work on the relationship of the disciplines of rhetoric and music. The bulk of his com...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Charles Maturin

aka: C. R. Maturin
borndied
1782, Sep 251824, Oct 30
an Irish Protestant clergyman (ordained in the Church of Ireland) and a writer of Gothic plays and novels. His best known work is the novel Melmoth the Wanderer. His first three works were Gothic novels published under the pseudonym Dennis Jasper Murphy and were critical and commercial failures. They did, however, catch the attention of Sir more
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Francois Mauriceau

aka: François
borndied
16371709, Oct 17
a French obstetrician. Born in Paris, he received his training in obstetrics at the Hôtel-Dieu. He was a leading obstetrician in 17th-century Europe — in 1668 he published, Traité des Maladies des Femmes Grosses et Accouchées, a book that helped establish obstetrics as a science. It was eventually translated into several languages. He is also kno...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Louis Ferdinand Alfred Maury

borndied
1817, Mar 231892, Feb 11
a French scholar and physician, important because his ideas about the interpretation of dreams and the effect of external stimuli on dreams pre-dated those of Sigmund Freud. He is mentioned by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams, and by Sebastian Faulks in Human Traces. He coined the term hypnagogic hallucination and reported a dream that famously inspired...
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Links (1)


Anthony Maxey

borndied
unknown1618, May 3
the Dean of Windsor. He was educated on the foundation at Westminster School, whence he was elected to Trinity College, Cambridge, on 18 April 1578, and graduated B.A. in 1581, M.A. in 1585, B.D. in 1594, and D.D. in 1608, but he failed to obtain a fellowship at Trinity. James I, out of admiration for his florid pulpit eloquence and dislike of tobacco, made...
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Links (1)


Robert May

borndied
15881664 ca
an English professional chef who trained in France and worked in England. He is best known for writing and publishing the 1660 cookbook The Accomplisht Cook. It was the first major book of English recipes, and contains instructions for many soups and broths, as well as recipes for both sweet and savoury pies. At age ten, May was sent to Paris by Lady ...
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Links (1)


Thomas May

borndied
1594/951650, Nov 13
an English poet, dramatist and historian of the Renaissance era. May was born in Mayfield, Sussex, the son of Sir Thomas May, a minor courtier. He matriculated at Sidney Sussex, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1613. He wrote his first published poem while at Cambridge, an untitled three-stanza contribution to the University's memorial collection of poems on th...
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Links (1)


Valerian Maykov

borndied
1823, Sep 91847, Jul 27
a Russian writer and literary critic, son of painter Nikolay Maykov, brother of poet Apollon and novelist Vladimir Maykov. Valerian Maykov, once a Petrashevsky Circle associate, was considered by contemporaries as heir to Vissarion Belinsky's position of Russia's leading critic, and later credited for being arguably the first in Russia to introduce scientifi...
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Links (1)


Francois Maynard

aka: François
borndied
1582, Nov 211646, Dec 28
a French poet who spent much of his life in Toulouse. In 1634 he accompanied the Cardinal de Noailles to Rome and spent about two years in Italy. On his return to France he made many unsuccessful efforts to obtain the favor of Cardinal Richelieu, but was obliged to...
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Links (1)


Charles de Mazade

borndied
1820, Mar 19/211893, Apr 27
a French historian, journalist, and political editor of Revue des deux mondes. It was he who was commissioned to write the obituary of Alfred de Musset to the Revue des Deux Mondes, May 15 1857. He was born in Castelsarrasin (Tarn-et-Garonne), and died in Paris. He was buried in Flamarens.
Links (1)


Giammaria Mazzucchelli

aka: Giovanni Maria
borndied
1707, Nov 281765, Nov 19
an Italian writer, bibliographer and historian. He began with numerous scholarly and accurate biographies of ancient and more modern authors, e.g., Archimedes, Pietro Aretino, Lodovico Adimari, Alamanni Luigi, Matteo and Filippo Villani). From this experience, he conceived an ambitious plan to collect biographies of all the writers of Italy from the earliest...
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Links (1)


Duncan Ban McIntyre

aka: Mac an t-Saoir
borndied
1724, Mar 201812, May 14
one of the most renowned of Scottish Gaelic poets and formed an integral part of one of the golden ages of Gaelic poetry in Scotland during the 18th century. He is best known for his poem about Beinn Dorain; "Moladh Beinn Dòbhrain" (English: "Praise of Ben Doran"). Duncan Ban's native region had no school and he remained illiterate throughout his life and k...
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Links (1)


Alexander McLachlan

borndied
18181896
a Scottish born Canadian poet, who was active in the mid nineteenth century and wrote in both Scottish dialect and poetic convention of the homesickness of Scottish immigrants to Canada. Both his contemporary and later critics have called him “the Canadian Robert B...
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Links (1)


Martha Mears

bornactivedied
unknown1797unknown
an eighteenth-century midwife and author. Mears was a midwife, mother, and author in London, England. Her work, Pupil of Nature, was published in 1797. It consists of 10 essays about topics from the state of the womb before and after conception, to the effect of music on nerves. She depicted the pregnant woman as a cluster of symptoms to be managed, particul...
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Links (1)


George Samuel Measom

borndied
1818, Dec 31901, Mar 1
an English engraver and publisher who compiled guides to railway travel in Great Britain in the mid-19th century. In later life he became involved in charitable works, and was knighted in 1891. In 1842 he married Sarah née Hillman. During the 1840 he developed his skills as an engraver and in 1849 published The Bible: its Elevating Influence on Man, a moral...
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Links (1)


Joseph Mede

borndied
15861639
an English scholar with a wide range of interests. He was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he became a Fellow from 1613. He is now remembered as a biblical scholar. He was also a naturalist and Egyptologist. He was a Hebraist, and became Lecturer of Greek. His Clavis Apocalyptica (1627 in Latin, English translation 1643, Key of the Revelation S...
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Links (1)


Henry Medwall

borndied
1462, Sep 81501/02
the first known English vernacular dramatist. Fulgens and Lucrece (c.1497), whose heroine must choose between two suitors, is the earliest known secular English play. The other play of Medwall is titled Nature. He stayed at the court of Cardinal Morton, Chancellor in the time of Henry VII. The other work of Medwall's that is extant is Nature. It is without d...
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Links (1)


Silahdar Findiklili Mehmed Agha

borndied
1658, Dec 71723
an Ottoman historian. Silahdar Findiklili Mehmed Agha wrote historical chronicles such as "Zeyl-i Fezleke" ("Postscript to the Fezleke," the Fezleke being an earlier work by the historian Kâtip Çelebi), which is today commonly known as Silahdar Tarihi (The History of Sword-Bearer). A second volume of his work was entitled Nusretname (The Book of Victories)...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Composers

Solakzade Mehmed Hemdemi

borndied
15921658
a 17th-century Ottoman historian and music composer. He wrote a famous Ottoman history named Tarih-i Solakzade (History of Solakzade). He seems to have been the son of a Solak, a janissary bowman of the sultan's personal guard, and was born in Constantinople.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Governance

Yirmisekizzade Mehmed Said Pasha

borndied
unknown1761, Oct
an Ottoman statesman and diplomat. He was Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from October 25, 1755 to April 1, 1756. He was dispatched for an embassy in Paris in 1742, as well as another more historically significant one in Sweden in 1733 and Poland, which led to his writing a sefaretname like his father. In Sweden, he succeeded Mustapha Aga as ambassador.
Links (1)


Ditmar Meidell

borndied
1826, Jan 241900, Jul 13
a Norwegian magazine and newspaper editor. He studied mineralogy for a short time before founding the satirical magazine Krydseren together with Gudbrand Andreas Berg, Jakob Thomas Rørdam and Claudius Schive in 1849. Hartvig Lassen, Anton Rosing, Halvor Bentsen, Hans Brun and especially Ole Richter were also part of the milieu around the magazine. Norway's ...
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Links (1)


Christoph Meiners

borndied
1747, Jul 311810, May 1
a German philosopher and historian, born in Warstade. He supported the polygenist theory of human origins. He was a member of the Göttingen School of History. Meiners wrote that the noblest race was the Celts, and they were able to conquer various parts of the world, were more sensitive to heat and cold and their delicacy is shown by the way they are select...
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Links (1)


Philip Melanchthon

aka: Philippus, Philipp Schwartzerdt
bornactivedied
1497, Feb 161514-15601560, Apr 19
a German reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and an influential designer of educational systems. He stands next to Luther and Calvin as a refor...
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Links (1)


Melesville

aka: Mélesville, Anne-Honoré-Joseph Duveyrier Mélesville
borndied
1787, Dec 131865, Nov 7
a French dramatist. Mélesville initially had success at the bar and as a magistrate. He left these jobs in 1814 to dedicate himself to the theatre (though he had first gained praise in that area in 1811 for his comedy l’Oncle rival). Out of consideration for his father's position, he wrote under the pseudonym Mélesville, by which he is still known. He wr...
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Links (1)


Elizabeth Melville

borndied
1578 ca1640 ca
a Scottish poet. In 1603 she became the earliest known Scottish woman writer to see her work in print, when the Edinburgh publisher Robert Charteris issued the first edition of Ane Godlie Dreame, a Calvinist dream-vision poem. There are also twelve letters, eleven of them holographs. Melville was an active member of the presbyterian resistance to the ecclesi...
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Links (1)


Herman Melville

borndied
1819, Aug 11891, Sep 28
an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. His best known works include Typee (1846), a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby-Dick (1851). His work was almost forgotten during his last thirty years. His writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, explorati...
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Timeline (2)Links (1)


Gilles Menage

aka: Ménage
borndied
1613, Aug 151692, Jul 23
a French scholar. Illness caused him to abandon the legal profession for the church. He became prior of Montdidier without taking holy orders, and lived for some years in the household of Cardinal de Retz (then coadjutor to the Archbishop of Paris), where he had leisure for literary pursuits. In 1664 he published at London an edition of the Lives of Eminent ...
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Links (1)


Louis-Nicolas Menard

aka: Ménard
borndied
1822, Oct 191901, Feb 9
a French man of letters also known for his early discoveries on collodion.He was born in Paris. His versatile genius occupied itself in turn with chemistry, poetry, painting and history. In 1843 he published, under the pseudonym of L. de Senneville, a translation of Promethee delivri. Turning to chemistry, he discovered collodion in 1846, but its value was n...
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Links (1)


Moses Mendelssohn

borndied
1729, Sep 61786, Jan 4
a German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the Haskalah, the 'Jewish enlightenment' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is indebted. It was after the breakdown of his health that Mendelssohn decided to "dedicate the remains of my strength for the benefit of my children or a goodly portion of my nation"—which he did by trying to bring the Jews close...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Military

Bernardino de Mendoza

borndied
1540 ca1604, Aug 3
a Spanish military commander, a diplomat and a writer on military history and politics. Many of Mendoza's dispatches to Madrid were first deciphered only in the Simancas archives by De Lamar Jensen; they revealed for the first time Mendoza's role in organizing and coordinating the Paris riots led by the duc de Guise, known as the Day of the Barricades (12 Ma...
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Timeline (2)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Governance

Diego Hurtado de Mendoza

borndied
15031575, Aug 14
a Spanish novelist, poet, diplomat and historian, governor of Granada. He acted for some time as military governor of Siena, represented Spain diplomatically at the Council of Trent, and in 1547 was nominated special plenipotentiary at Rome, where he remained till 1554. His Guerra de Granada (concerning the 1568 Morisco Revolt in the Alpujarras) was publishe...
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Links (1)


Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza

aka: Juan González
borndied
15451618, Feb 14
the author of the first Western history of China to publish Chinese characters for Western delectation. Published by him in 1586, Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China (The History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China and the Situation Thereof) is an account of observations several Spanish travelers in ...
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Links (1)


Menon

bornactivedied
unknown1739-1768unknown
the pseudonym of an 18th-century French cookbook author; his true identity is unknown. His numerous works were originally printed, and often reprinted, anonymously. The best-known of his books is probably La Cuisinière bourgeoise, which was widely imitated and translated.
Links (1)


Louis-Sebastien Mercier

aka: Louis-Sébastien
borndied
1740, Jun 61814, Apr 25
a French dramatist and writer. Mercier began his literary career by writing heroic epistles. He early came to the conclusion that Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux and more
Links (1)


Claude-Francois-Xavier Mercier de Compiegne

aka: Claude-François-Xavier Mercier de Compiègne
borndied
17631800
a French writer and translator. He is best known for his satirical and licentious books. As author and editor, his name remained attached to stories and erotic poems such as The Evenings convent or a novitiate of love and the Breviary of pretty women, for a public libertine . Mercier Compiègne however never made ??fortune: the Convention carried him on the ...
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Links (1)


Barthelemy Mercier de Saint-Leger

aka: Barthélemy Mercier de Saint-Léger
borndied
1734, Apr 41799, May 13
a French abbot and librarian. He entered in 1749 the Congregation of Canons Regular of St. Genevieve, and after a year of trial, took her vows. He was immediately sent by his superiors to the Abbey Chatrices in Champagne. He collaborated in Journal of Trévoux of which he was director from October 1764 to June 1766, to the literary year in the Journal of Bou...
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Links (1)


Bartolomeo Merelli

borndied
1794, May 191879, Apr 10
an Italian impresario and librettist, best known as the manager of the La Scala Milan opera house between 1829 and 1850, and for his support for the young Giuseppe Verdi. Merelli was born in Bergamo and studied composition there with Simon Mayr. He moved to Mila...
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Links (1)


Joseph Mery

aka: Méry
borndied
1797, Jan 211866, Jun 17
a French writer, journalist, novelist, poet, playwright and librettist. An ardent romanticist, he collaborated with Auguste Barthélemy in many of his satires and wrote a great number of stories, now forgotten. Nowadays he is perhaps best remembered as the co-librettist of the original version in French of more
Links (1)


Francisci a Mesgnien Meninski

aka: Francisci, François, Franciszek
borndied
16231698
the author of a multi-volume Turkish-to-Latin dictionary and grammar of the Turkish language, first published in 1680, which was ground-breaking in its comprehensiveness at the time, and for historians today it is a valuable reference for the Turkish language of the time. Mesgnien-Meninski was born in Lorraine (duchy) in today's northeastern France. He studi...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Jean Meslier

borndied
1664, Jun 151729, Jun 17
a French Catholic priest (abbé) who was discovered, upon his death, to have written a book-length philosophical essay promoting atheism. Described by the author as his "testament" to his parishioners, the text denounces all religion. When Meslier died, there were found in his house three copies of a 633-page octavo manuscript in which the village curate den...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Franz Mesmer

borndied
1734, May 231815, Mar 5
a German physician with an interest in astronomy, who theorised that there was a natural energetic transference that occurred between all animated and inanimate objects that he called animal magnetism, sometimes later referred to as mesmerism. The theory attracted a wide following between about 1780 and 1850, and continued to have some influence until the en...
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Timeline (1)Links (1)


Jean-Jacques de Mesmes

aka: comte d'Avaux
borndied
16401688, Jan 9
a French magistrate, intendant of Soissons, and Président à mortier of the Parliament of Paris. The descendant of a family from Béarn, Mesmes was count of Avaux, viscount of Neufchâtel-sur-Aisne, Lord of Moissy-Cramayel, provost and master of ceremonies of the Ordre des Chevaliers du Saint-Esprit from 1671 to 1684. He participated in the signing of the T...
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Links (1)


Arnold Johan Messenius

borndied
16071651
a Swedish enfant terrible and Rikshistoriograf who was condemned to death and executed under the reign of Christina, Queen of Sweden. His father was sentenced to death in July 1616, but the king changed the sentence to prison, probably for life. Messenius wrote during his imprisonment Scandia illustrata, a history of the Nordic countries in 14 volumes, which...
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Links (1)


Johannes Messenius

borndied
15791636
a Swedish historian, dramatist and university professor. In Danzig, in 1605, his brethren among the Jesuits had informed the Swedish King Charles IX that Johannes had written a mocking poem on him. In order to convince everybody of his contempt for the Jesuits, he published two works. One was shorter and named Detecto Fraudis Jesuiticæ, in 1610, and a longe...
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Links (1)


Richard Methley

aka: Richard Firth, Richard Furth
borndied
1451 ca1527/28
a monk of the Carthusian house of Mount Grace Priory in Yorkshire in the second half of the fifteenth century. He entered Mount Grace aged about 25, seemingly spending the rest of his life at that same house, since his writings give no indication that he was ever resident in another house of the Order. He is remembered for his writings - some original, and s...
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Links (1)


Joseph Francois Michaud

aka: Joseph François
borndied
1767, Jun 191839, Sep 30
a French historian and publicist. Michaud was born at Albens, Savoie, educated at Bourg-en-Bresse, and afterwards engaged in literary work at Lyon, where the French Revolution first aroused the strong dislike of revolutionary principles which manifested itself throughout the rest of his life. In 1791 he went to Paris, where, at great risk to his own safety, ...
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Links (1)


Louis Gabriel Michaud

borndied
1773, Jan 191858, Aug 3
a French author, biographer, and compiler of Biographie Universelle. Michaud was author of historical books, in particular Historical Outline and Rationale of the First Wars of Bonaparte (1814). He was the editor of several newspapers and wrote prefaces to royalist books that he printed. In 1802 he published a biography of many notable individuals at the end...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ArtistsSculptorsArchitects

Michelangelo

aka: Michelangelo Buonarroti, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
bornactivedied
1475, Mar 61490-15641564, Feb 18
an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Author of The Creation of Adam (c. 1511)
Timeline (2)Links (19)


Cross-listed in Composers

Adam Vaclav Michna z Otradovic

aka: Adam Václav
bornactivedied
1600, Jun 301633-16731676, Oct 16
a Czech Catholic aristocrat, poet, composer, hymn writer, organist and choir leader of the early Baroque era. He is also known in simplified form as Adam Michna and during his life as Adamus Wenceslaus Michna de Ottradowicz. He was the most important Czech composer and poet of the early Baroque who initiated the development of Czech art in that era and becam...
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Adam Mickiewicz

borndied
1798, Dec 241855, Nov 26
a Polish poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator, professor of Slavic literature, and political activist. He is regarded as national poet in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. A principal figure in Polish Romanticism, he is counted one of Poland's "Three Bards" ("Trzej Wieszcze") and is widely regarded as Poland's greatest poet. He is also considered on...
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Christopher Middleton

borndied
1560 ca1628
an English poet and translator. The Dictionary of National Biography gives tentative information. He may be identical with the Christopher Middleton of Cheshire who matriculated from Brasenose College, Oxford, 12 December 1580, aged 20. A clergyman of the same name, who graduated B.D. from St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1619, was rector of Aston-le-Walls,...
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Links (1)


Thomas Middleton

borndied
15801627, Jul
an English Jacobean playwright and poet. Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson among the most successful and prolific playwrights who wrote their best p...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Composers

Luis de Milan

aka: Milán, Lluís del Milà, Luys Milán
borndied
1500 ca1561 ca
a Spanish Renaissance composer, vihuelist (a forerunner to the baroque guitar), and writer on music. He was the first composer in history to publish music for the vihuela de mano, an instrument employed primarily in the Iberian peninsula and some of the Italian states during the 15th and 16th centuries, and he was also one of the first musicians to specify v...
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Links (1)


Grace Mildmay

borndied
1552 ca1620
an English noblewoman, diarist and medical practitioner. Her autobiography is one of the earliest existing autobiographies of an English woman. Originally from Wiltshire, she married Sir Anthony Mildmay in 1567 and moved to Apethorpe Hall, his father's home in Northamptonshire. She practised medicine on her family and others, with an extensive knowledge of m...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Educators

Sibella Elizabeth Miles

borndied
1800, Sep 281882, Mar 29
an English schoolteacher, poet and writer of the 19th century. Sibella Miles ran a girls' boarding-school at Penzance for a number of years prior to 1833 and occupied her leisure hours with the composition of poetry. Many of her contributions appeared in the Forget-me-Not for 1825 and subsequent years, the Selector or Cornish Magazine, 1826–8, the Oriental...
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Links (1)


James Mill

aka: James Milne
borndied
1773, Apr 61836, Jun 23
a Scottish historian, economist, political theorist, and philosopher. He is counted among the founders of the Ricardian school of economics. He also wrote the monumental work The History of British India. He was the first writer to divide Indian history into three parts: Hindu, Muslim and British, a classification which has proved surpassingly influen...
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Links (1)


John Stuart Mill

borndied
1806, May 201873, May 8
an English philosopher, political economist, feminist, and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory and political economy. He has been called "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century." Mill's conception of liberty justified th...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Johann Martin Miller

borndied
1750, Dec 31814, Jun 21
a German theologian and writer. He is best known for his novel Siegwart, which became one of the most successful books at the time. During his years in Göttingen, Miller mainly wrote folk songs, many of which were set to music during his lifetime and are still found in different songbooks today. After he had returned to his hometown, he then published in 17...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyMilitary

William Miller

bornactivedied
1782, Feb 151809-18491849, Dec 20
an American Baptist preacher who is credited with beginning the mid-19th century North American religious movement known as the Millerites. After his prophecies of the Second Coming did not occur as expected in the 1840s, new heirs of his message emerged, including the Advent Christians (1860), the Seventh-day Adventists (1863) and other Adventist movements....
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Timeline (4)Links (16)


John Mills

borndied
1717 ca1794 ca
an English writer on agriculture, translator and editor. Mills and Gottfried Sellius are known for being the first to prepare a French edition of Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia for publication in 1745, which eventually resulted in the Encyclopédie published in France between 1751 and 1772. As writer on agriculture, Mills is credited for publishing the earli...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Henry Hart Milman

borndied
1791, Feb 101868, Sep 24
an English historian and ecclesiastic. Educated at Eton and at Brasenose College, Oxford, his university career was brilliant. In 1821 Milman was elected professor of poetry at Oxford; and in 1827 he delivered the Bampton lectures on The character and conduct of the Apostles considered as an evidence of Christianity. In 1835, Sir Robert Peel made him Rector...
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Links (1)


John Milton

bornactivedied
1608, Dec 91623-16741674, Nov 8
an English poet, polemicist, and man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank ...
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Timeline (2)Links (16)


Guy Autret de Missirien

borndied
1599 ca1660, Apr 3
a French historian and genealogist born in Goulien and died in Paris. In 1637, he published the Annotations sur les lettres patentes du Roy portant commission de convoquer le ban et l'arrière-ban de Bretagne. He wrote two articles for the Gazette de France on the return of Henriette de France, in 1644. In 1655 he edited a Vie de saint Joachim today lost. Th...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Commerce

Nathaniel Mist

borndied
16851737, Sep 30
an 18th-century British printer and journalist whose Mist's Weekly Journal was the central, most visible, and most explicit opposition newspaper to the whig administrations of Robert Walpole. Where other opposition papers would defer, Mist's would expli...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in PhysiciansScientists

John Mitchell [2]

borndied
1711, Apr 131768, Feb 29
a colonial American physician and botanist. Mitchell wrote a paper in 1744 called An Essay upon the Causes of the Different Colours of People in Different Climates, submitted to the Royal Society in London by his correspondent Peter Collinson. In the paper, Mitchell claimed that the first race on earth had been a brown and reddish colour. He created the most...
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Links (1)


Bernt Moe

borndied
1814, Jun 11850, Jun 5
a Norwegian historian, archivist, biographer, and encyclopedist. He was the editor of the two encyclopedias Tidsskrift for den norske personalhistorie and Biographiske Efterretninger om Eidsvolds-Repræsentanter og Storthingsmænd i Tidsrummet 1814—1845.
Links (1)


Jorgen Moe

aka: Jørgen
borndied
1813, Apr 221882, Mar 27
a Norwegian folklorist, bishop, poet and author. He is best known for the Norske Folkeeventyr, a collection of Norwegian folk tales which he edited in collaboration with Peter Christen Asbjørnsen. Moe has a special claim on critical attention in regard to his lyrical poems, of which a small collection appeared in 1850. Moe felt strongly that writing should ...
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Links (1)


Iosipos Moisiodax

aka: Moesiodax
borndied
17251800
an 18th-century philosopher and professor and one of the greatest exponents of the modern Greek Enlightenment. He also became director of the Princely Academy of Iasi. In 1766, becoming sick, possibly of tuberculosis, he retired from this professorship and went to Walachia, where he passed the next 10 years. Having recovered from his illness, he returns to I...
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Links (1)


Moliere

aka: Molière, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin
bornactivedied
1622, Jan 151643-16731673, Feb 17
a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature. Among Molière's best known works are The Misanthrope, The School for Wives, Tartuffe, The Miser, The Imaginary Invalid, and The Bourgeois Gentleman. Born into a prosperous family and having studied at t...
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Timeline (1)Links (1)


Atukuri Molla

borndied
14401530
a Telugu poet who authored the Telugu-language Ramayana. Identified by her caste, she was popularly known as Kummara (potter) Molla. Molla is the second female Telugu poet of note, after Tallapaka Timmakka, wife of Annamacharya. She translated the Sanskrit Ramayana into Telugu. Her work is known as Molla bhagavata and is still one of the simplest of many Ram...
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Links (1)


Claude Mollet

borndied
1564 ca1648 ca
a member of the Mollet dynasty of French garden designers in the seventeenth century. Mollet's volume Théâtre des plans et jardinages, which contains autobiographical information, was published by his son in 1652, after his death. The manuscript was written many years before, about 1613–15, and revised over the years. A handsome calligraphic copy ...
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Links (3)


Cross-listed in Military

Pierre Alexandre Jean Molliere

aka: Mollière
borndied
18001850, Jul 6
a French general and writer. Participated in the expedition sent by Louis Napoleon to suppress the Roman Republic, ended with the long siege of Rome. From his experience of Algeria he authored a remarkable text of military theory, entitled fort remarquable mémoire sur l'organization des corps auxiliaires en Algérie .
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Composers

Jerome-Joseph de Momigny

aka: Jérôme-Joseph
borndied
1762, Jan 201842, Aug 25
a Belgian/French composer and music-theorist. He was born in Philippeville, Belgium, and composed music and wrote books, which he printed himself. He was very good at writing poetry and other types of books. His theories about rhythm and musical phrasing were ahead of his time. From 1803 to 1806 he published his most notorious work Cours complet d'harmoni...
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Links (1)


Margareta Momma

borndied
17021772
a Swedish publisher, managing editor and journalist. She was the writer of the political essaypaper Samtal emellan Argi Skugga och en obekant Fruentimbers Skugga, and the editor of the Stockholm Gazette. Chronologically, she may be counted as the first female journalist in Sweden. Margareta Momma is identified as the author behind the French language essay p...
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Links (1)


Theodor Mommsen

borndied
1817, Nov 301903, Nov 1
a German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer generally regarded as one of the greatest classicists of the 19th century. His work regarding Roman history is still of fundamental importance for contemporary research. Mommsen published over 1,500 works, and effectively established a new framework for the system...
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Links (1)


Lewys Mon

aka: Môn
bornactivedied
unknown1485-1527unknown
a Welsh-language poet, one of the Beirdd yr Uchelwyr (Poets of the Nobility), from the cwmwd (commote) of Llifon (cy) on Ynys Môn, north Wales. About 110 of his poems survive, mostly traditional praise poems and elegies for members of the Welsh gentry, especially of north Wales.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Nicolas-Hubert de Mongault

borndied
1674, Oct 61746, Aug 11
a French ecclesiastic and writer. He was born and died in Paris. He frequented the salon of Madame Lambert and translated from Greek a history of Herodian (1700) and Letters of Latin Cicero to Atticus (1701). He was elected member of the French Academy in 1718 and was appointed abbot of Villeneuve, at Bignon, in 1719, a position he held until his death.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in CommercePerformers

Augustus Mongredien

borndied
18071888
a corn merchant, also known as a political economist and writer. He was a leading amateur British chess master. He was educated in the Roman Catholic college at Penn, Buckinghamshire, and continued his studies long after leaving the institution. He entered commercial life at an early age, and was the owner of the first screw steamers to the Levant. In 1859, ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ArtistsPerformers

Henry Monnier

aka: Henry-Bonaventure
borndied
1799, Jun 71877, Jan 3
a French playwright, caricaturist and actor. After studying at the Lycée Bonaparte, he frequented the workshops of Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson and Antoine-Jean Gros. He installed himself in London in 1822 and returned to France 5 years later.[1] His meetings with Alexandre Dumas, Théophile Gautier, Stendhal, Eugène Sue, Prosper Mérimée, Eugène Scribe, E...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Donald Monro

bornactivedied
unknown1526-1574unknown
a Scottish clergyman, who wrote an early and historically valuable description of the Hebrides and other Scottish islands and enjoyed the honorific title of "Dean of the Isles". Monro became the vicar of Snizort and Raasay in 1526 later noting that although the latter (and the adjacent island of Rona) pertained to the Bishop of the Isles "by heritage" that i...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Governance

Charles Montagu

aka: 1st Earl of Halifax
bornactivedied
1661, Apr 161683-17061715, May 19
an English poet and statesman. In 1685, Montagu's verses on the death of King Charles II made such an impression on the Earl of Dorset that he was invited to town and introduced to other entertainments. In 1687, Montagu joined with Matthew Prior in "The City Mouse and the Country Mouse," a burlesque of John Dryden's The Hind and the Panther.
Links (1)


Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

borndied
1689, May1762, Aug 21
an English aristocrat, letter writer and poet. Lady Mary is today chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her letters from travels to the Ottoman Empire, as wife to the British ambassador to Turkey, which have been described by Billie Melman as "the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient". Aside from her writing, Lad...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Richard Montagu

aka: Mountague
borndied
15771641, Apr 13
an English cleric and prelate. On the death, in 1614, of Isaac Casaubon, with whom he had previously corresponded about the Exercitationes ad Baronii Annales (against Baronius), Montagu was directed by the king to publish the work. It appeared the same year, and in 1615 James requested him to prepare an answer to Baronius on similar lines. This work, based o...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Walter Montagu

aka: David Cutler
borndied
16031677
an English courtier, secret agent (a.k.a. David Cutler) and Benedictine abbot. He continued to work in France, funded as a secret service agent, returning to England in 1633. At court he distinguished himself by his pastoral drama, entitled The Shepherd's Paradise, which he had published in 1629. He entered a Benedictine monastery, and was professed in the o...
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Links (1)


Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo

aka: Rodríguez de Montalvo
borndied
1450 ca1504
a Castilian author who arranged the modern version of the chivalric romance Amadis of Gaul, written in three books in the 14th century by an unknown author. Montalvo added a fourth book of his own and also wrote a sequel, Las sergas de Esplandián (The Exploits of Esplandián or The Adventures of Esplandián) (oldest known printing, 1510), in which he tells ...
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Links (1)


Antoine de Montchrestien

aka: Montchrétien
borndied
1575 ca1621, Oct 7/8
a French soldier, dramatist, adventurer and economist. Montchrestien initially sought a literary career (inspired by François de Malherbe): in 1595 he published his first tragedy, Sophonisbe or La Carthaginoise. In 1601, he published five more plays. Montchrestien was involved in several duels (illegal in France from 1602 on); in 1603 he was left near dead;...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Legal

Montesquieu

aka: Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
borndied
1689, Jan 181755, Feb 10
a French lawyer, man of letters, and political philosopher who lived during the Age of Enlightenment. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, which is implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. He is also known for doing more than any other author to secure the place of the word despotism in the political lexicon...
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Links (1)


Madame de Montesson

aka: Charlotte-Jeanne Béraud de La Haye de Riou
borndied
1738, Oct 41806, Feb 6
a mistress to Louis Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans, and ultimately, his wife; however, Louis XV would not allow her to become the Duchess. She wrote and acted in several plays. For her husband's amusement and her own, she set up a little theater and wrote several plays, in the acting of which she herself took part. She was arrested on 20 April 1793 (1...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Bernard de Montfaucon

borndied
1655, Jan 131741, Dec 21
a French Benedictine monk of the Congregation of Saint Maur. He was an astute scholar who founded the discipline of palaeography, as well as being an editor of works of the Fathers of the Church. He is regarded as one of the founders of modern archaeology. In 1687 Montfaucon was called to the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and he started to work on an edit...
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Links (1)


Alexander Montgomerie

borndied
1550 ca1598
a Scottish Jacobean courtier and poet, or makar, born in Ayrshire. He was one of the principal members of the Castalian Band, a circle of poets in the court of James VI in the 1580s which included the king himself. Montgomerie was for a time in favour as one of the king's "favourites". He was a Catholic in a largely Protestant court and his involvement in po...
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Links (1)


Dumont de Montigny

aka: Jean-François-Benjamin Dumont de Montigny
borndied
1696, Jul 311760
a colonial officer and farmer in French Louisiana in the 18th century. He was born in Paris, France and died in Pondicherry, India. His writings about French Louisiana include a two-volume history published in 1753, as well as an epic poem and a prose memoir preserved in manuscript and published long after his death. He was educated at a Jesuit collège, or ...
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Links (1)


Nicolas de Montreux

borndied
1561 ca1608
a French nobleman, novelist, poet, translator and dramatist. Montreux's vast corpus spans theater, the novel, the pastoral, history, poetry and spiritual reflection and he shows a pronounced preoccupation with moral questions (such as chastity). With Béroalde de Verville, Montreux represents a literature of transition from the Valois court (and the generati...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Narcis Monturiol

aka: Monturiol i Estarriol
borndied
1819, Sep 281885, Sep 6
a Spanish intellectual, artist and engineer. He was the inventor of the first air-independent and combustion-engine-driven submarine. In 1858 Monturiol presented his project in a scientific thesis, titled The Ictineo or fish-ship. The first dive of his first submarine, Ictineo I, took place in September 1859 in the harbour of Barcelona.
Links (1)


Susanna Moodie

borndied
1803, Dec 61885, Apr 8
an English-born Canadian author who wrote about her experiences as a settler in Canada, which was a British colony at the time. She wrote her first children's book in 1822, and published other children's stories in London, including books about Spartacus and Jugurtha. In London she was also involved in the Anti-Slavery Society, transcribing the narrative of ...
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Links (1)


Clement Moore

borndied
1779, Jul 151863, Jul 10
a writer and American Professor of Oriental and Greek Literature, as well as Divinity and Biblical Learning, at the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in New York City. The seminary was developed on land donated by Moore and it continues on this site at Ninth Avenue between 20th and 21st streets, in an area known as Chelsea Squa...
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Timeline (1)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Explorers

George Fletcher Moore

borndied
1798, Dec 101886, Dec 30
a prominent early settler in colonial Western Australia, and "one (of) the key figures in early Western Australia's ruling elite". He conducted a number of exploring expeditions; was responsible for one of the earliest published records of the language of the Australian Aborigines of the Perth area; and was the author of Diary of Ten Years Eventful Life of a...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Performers

Thomas Moore

aka: Anacreon Moore
bornactivedied
1779, May 281795-18461852, Feb 25
an Irish poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer, now best remembered for the lyrics of The Minstrel Boy and The Last Rose of Summer. He was responsible, with John Murray, for burning Lord George Gordon Byron's memoirs after his death. In h...
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Links (14)


William Moraley

borndied
16981762
an Englishman who emigrated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1729 as an indentured servant. In his autobiography, The Infourtunate: or the Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, Written by Himself, originally published in 1743, Moraley gives a different view of colonial America, commenting on the lives of slaves, servants and Native Americans, topics not ...
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Links (1)


Leandro Fernandez de Moratin

aka: Leandro Fernández de Moratín
borndied
1760, Mar 101828, Jun 21
a Spanish dramatist, translator and neoclassical poet. Early in his career, he was supported by statesman and author Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, who, in 1787, arranged for him to study for a year in Paris. In 1792, the Spanish government provided the funds for him to travel to England in order to extend his education. In 1790 he published his first comedy ...
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Links (1)


Hannah More

borndied
1745, Feb 21833, Sep 7
an English religious writer and philanthropist, remembered as a poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, as a writer on moral and religious subjects, and as a practical philanthropist. Born in Bristol, she taught at a school established there by her father and began writing plays. She became involved with the London literary elite ...
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Links (1)


Henry More

borndied
1614, Oct 121687, Sep 1
an English philosopher of the Cambridge Platonist school. More taught many notable pupils, including Anne Finch, sister of Heneage Finch, subsequently Earl of Nottingham. She later became Lady Conway, and at her country seat at Ragley in Warwickshire, More would spend "a considerable part of his time." She and her husband both appreciated him, and amidst the...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Legal

Sir Thomas More

bornactivedied
1478, Feb 71502-15351535, Jul 6
an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was also a councillor to Henry VIII, and Lord High Chancellor of England from October 1529 to 16 May 1532. More opposed the Protestant Reformation, in particular the theolog...
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Timeline (4)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

John Morgan [1]

aka: John Morgan Matchin, John Morgan of Matchin
borndied
1688, Feb 71733/34, Feb 28
a Welsh clergyman, scholar and poet. Morgan had a particular interest in Welsh literature, and was one of the "London Welsh", a group intent on preserving and promoting Welsh culture in the capital, from around the time of his appointment to Matching. He wrote poetry, but was also a prose writer and translator. His best known work is Myfyrdodau bucheddol ar ...
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Links (1)


John Minter Morgan

borndied
17821854
an author and philanthropist. His first book, published in 1819, entitled Remarks on the Practicability of Mr. Owen's Plan to improve the Condition of the Lower Classes, was dedicated to William Wilberforce, but met with slight acknowledgement. His next p...
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Links (1)


Lady Sydney Morgan

borndied
1781, Dec 251859, Apr 14
an Irish novelist, best known as the author of The Wild Irish Girl. She was one of the most vivid and hotly discussed literary figures of her generation. She began her career with a precocious volume of poems. She collected Irish tunes, for which she composed the words, thus setting a fashion adopted with signal success by more
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Artists

Sylvanus Morgan

borndied
16201693, Mar 27
an English arms-painter and author. In 1642, he wrote 'A Treatise of Honor and Honorable Men,' which remained in manuscript (see Brydges's Censura Literaria, viii. 236). In 1648, he printed a poem entitled 'London, King Charles his Augusta, or City Royal of the Founders;' and in 1652 'Horologiographia Optica, Dialling universal and particular.' In 1661, he p...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

William Morgan

borndied
15451604, Sep 10
a Bishop of Llandaff and of St Asaph, and the translator of the first version of the whole Bible into Welsh from Greek and Hebrew. He graduated BA in 1568 and MA in 1571, before seven years of Biblical studies, including a study of the Bible in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic and the works of the Church Fathers and contemporary Protestant theologians.He began work...
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Links (1)


Lewys Morgannwg

bornactivedied
unknown1520-1565unknown
a Welsh language poet from Morgannwg, south Wales. He lived at St. Bride's Major Lewys was one of the foremost poets of the sixteenth century. Most of his poems that have survived are eulogies and elegies in strict metre. Lewys was the household poet to Sir William Griffith of Penrhyn. He was also a bardic teacher, most notably of Gruffudd Hiraethog.
Links (1)


Ralph Morice

borndied
1500 caunknown
the secretary and biographer of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. Morice, from his official position, was in possession of information, and helped John Foxe and others in their literary researches, mainly by supplying them with his Anecdotes of Cranmer. This compilation was used by Strype in his Memorials of Cranmer, and was reprinted from the manus...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Eduard Morike

aka: Mörike
bornactivedied
1804, Sep 81831-18561875, Jun 4
a German Romantic poet and writer of novellas and novels. His first published work was the novel Maler Nolten (“The painter Nolten”, 1832), a Bildungsroman and fantastic tale about the life of a painter, and which revealed his imaginative power; it became fairly popular. The novella Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag (“Mozart on the way to Prague”, 1856)...
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Links (7)


Philippe de Mornay

aka: seigneur du Plessis Marly, Du-Plessis-Mornay, Mornay Du Plessis
borndied
1549, Nov 51623, Nov 11
a French Protestant writer and member of the anti-monarchist Monarchomaques. With the death of the Duke of Alençon-Anjou in 1584, by which Henry was brought within sight of the throne of France, the period of Mornay's greatest political activity began, and after the death of Henry I, Prince of Condé, in 1588, his influence became so great that he was popul...
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Timeline (1)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Educators

Maria Frances Ann Morris

borndied
1813, Feb 121875, Oct 28
a teacher, artist and poet in Nova Scotia. Morris published several series of botanical lithographs: Wildflowers of Nova Scotia, with one series in 1839 to 1840 and a second series in 1853. In 1856, she published a volume of poetry Metrical musings with her sister Catherine.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Performers

Pieter Cornelisz van der Morsch

aka: Piero
bornactivedied
15431598-16161628
a man in Leiden best known today for his portrait that was painted by Frans Hals in 1616. He was the jester of the Leiden rederijkers club De Witte Acoleyen and signed his works with his motto, which was "LX.N.Tyt" (spoken "el eks en Tyt", or "to each his time"). I...
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Links (1)Notes (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Saul Levi Morteira

aka: Mortera
bornactivedied
1596 ca1616-16601660, Feb 10
a Dutch rabbi of Portuguese descent. Morteira was the founder of the congregational school Keter Torah, in the highest class of which he taught Talmud and Jewish philosophy. He had also to preach three times a month, and received an annual remuneration of 600 guilders and 100 baskets of turf. Morteira's polemical sermons in Hebrew against the Catholic Church...
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Links (1)


George Morton

aka: Mourt
borndied
1585 ca1624
an English Puritan Separatist. He was the publisher of, and perhaps helped write, the first account in Great Britain of the founding of Plymouth Colony, called Mourt's Relation. He was from Bawtry, South Yorkshire, England, and member of the Scrooby Congregation of separatists who eventually became the Mayflower Pilgrims. Morton, who had moved to Leyden, Hol...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Thomas Morton [1]

borndied
1564, Mar 201659, Sep 20
an English churchman, bishop of several dioceses. Well-connected and in favour with King James, he was also a significant polemical writer against Roman Catholic views. He rose to become Bishop of Durham, but despite a record of sympathetic treatment of Puritans as a diocesan, and underlying Calvinist beliefs shown in the Gagg controversy, his royalism saw h...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in

Thomas Morton [2]

borndied
1579 ca1647
an early American colonist from Devon, England. A lawyer, writer and social reformer, he was famed for founding the British colony of Merrymount, which was located in what is now Quincy, Massachusetts, and for his work studying Native American culture.
Timeline (1)Links (1)


Fynes Moryson

aka: Morison
borndied
15661630, Feb 12
an English travel writer. He spent most of the decade of the 1590s travelling on the European continent and the eastern Mediterranean lands. He wrote about it later in his multi-volume "Itinerary", a work of value to historians as a picture of the social conditions existing in the lands he visited. In 1617, Moryson published the first three volumes of An Iti...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Anthony of the Mother of God

aka: Antonio Oliva y Ordás
borndied
15831637, Nov 27
a Spanish Discalced Carmelite friar, who was notable as a professor of philosophy and theology. As a young man, he entered the Order of Discalced Carmelites around 1600. After completing his studies at their seminary, then part of the University of Salamanca, in 1609 he was ordained a Catholic priest. With the collaboration of his colleagues, Anthony underto...
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Margaret of the Mother of God

aka: Margriet van Noort
borndied
15871646
a Dutch Discalced Carmelite lay sister in the Brussels Carmel. On 8 December 1607 Margaret was admitted to the Brussels Carmel by the foundress of the convent, the Venerable Ana de Jesús, making her profession as a lay sister in 1609 and taking the name Margaret of the Mother of God. She was reputed to have gifts of prophecy and wonder-working, and recorded...
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Lucretia Mott

borndied
1793, Jan 31880, Nov 11
an American Quaker, abolitionist, a women's rights activist, and a social reformer. She had formed the idea of reforming the position of women in society when she was amongst the women excluded from the World Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. In 1849, Mott's "Sermon to the Medical Students" was published. In 1850, Mott published her speech Discourse on Woman,...
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Peter Anthony Motteux

aka: Pierre Antoine
borndied
1663, Feb 251718, Feb 18
an English author, playwright, and translator. Motteux was a significant figure in the evolution of English journalism in his era, as the publisher and editor of The Gentleman's Journal, "the first English magazine," from 1692 to 1694. His death in a bawdy house was thought to be suspicious, and caused a good deal of legal disturbance." Five people we...
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Anne Mozley

borndied
1809, Sep 171891, Jun 27
an English author who lived in Derby and the small village of Barrow-upon-Trent, which is south of the city. She has been described as an almost anonymous author, as few of her works were attributed to her on first publication. Mozley was known as an educated and religiously interested individual. After taking over her brother Thomas's house, she dedicated ...
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Cross-listed in Educators

Richard Mulcaster

borndied
1531 ca1611, Apr 15
is known best for his headmasterships and pedagogic writings. He is often regarded as the founder of English language lexicography. In 1561 he became the first headmaster of Merchant Taylors' School in London, where he wrote his two treatises on education, Positions (1581) and Elementarie (1582). Merchant Taylors' School was at that time the largest school i...
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Adam Muller

aka: Müller, Ritter von Nitterdorf
borndied
1779, Jun 301829, Jan 17
a German publicist, literary critic, political economist, theorist of the state and forerunner of economic romanticism. In the field of literature and aesthetics, Müller belongs to the Romantic school. He is a Romanticist even in his specialty, politics and political economy. Müller was a man of great and versatile talents, an excellent orator, and a sugg...
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Cross-listed in Artists

Maler Muller

aka: Friedrich , Müller
borndied
1749, Jan 131825, Apr 23
German poet, dramatist and painter from the Electoral Palatinate, is best known for his slightly sentimental prose idylls on country life. In 1774-1775, he settled in Mannheim, where he soon acquired a reputation as a poet. Before he left Mannheim he had tried his hand at literature, under the influence of the Sturm und Drang movement. In 1775, he published ...
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Cross-listed in Artists

Thomas James Mulvany

borndied
17791845
an Irish painter and keeper of the Royal Hibernian Academy. Mulvany was an exhibitor with the Dublin Society of Artists, at the rooms of the Dublin Society in Hawkins Street, Dublin, in May 1809. Mulvany wrote for The Citizen on Irish artists. During the last years of his life Mulvany was employed in editing the Life of James Gandon. The book was published i...
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Thomas Mun

borndied
1571, Jun 171641, Jul 21
an English writer on economics and is often referred to as the last of the early mercantilists. Most notably, he is known for serving as the director of the East India Company. Due to his strong belief in the state and his prior experience as a merchant, Mun took on a prominent role during the economic depression which began in 1620. To defend the East India...
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Andreas Munch

borndied
1811, Oct 191884, Jun 27
a Norwegian poet, novelist, playwright and newspaper editor. He was the first person to be granted a poet's pension by the Parliament of Norway. Munch made his literary debut in 1836 with the poetry collection Ephemerer (Ephemera). His first play was Kong Sverres Ungdom from 1837, written for the opening of Christiania Theatre´s new building. In 1840 he pub...
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Peter Andreas Munch

aka: P. A. Munch
borndied
1810, Dec 151863, May 25
a Norwegian historian, known for his work on the medieval history of Norway. Munch’s scholarship included Norwegian archaeology, geography, ethnography, linguistics, and jurisprudence. He was also noted for his Norse Legendary saga translations. In 1857, after producing numerous publications, he received a large grant for archives research in Rome and live...
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Anthony Munday

aka: Monday
borndied
1560, Oct1633, Aug 10
an English playwright and miscellaneous writer. He was baptized on 13 October 1560 in St Gregory by Paul's, London, and was the son of Christopher Munday, a stationer, and Jane Munday. The chief interest in Munday for the modern reader lies in his work as one of the chief predecessors of Shakespeare in English dramatic composition, as well as his writings on...
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Cross-listed in Physicians

Johannes Munnicks

aka: Jean Munniks, Munnix, Munnicx, Munnigk, Munick, Jan Munnickius
borndied
1652, Oct 161711, Jun 10
a Dutch Golden Age medical doctor and writer from the Northern Netherlands. He wrote Tractatus de urinus, earumque inspectione (Utrecht 1674, Dutch: Verhandelinge der wateren, en hoe men dezelve bezien moet von D. van Haagstraten, Dordrecht 1683). In 1677 he wrote De utilitate anatomiae and became Lector of Anatomy in Utrecht. In 1678 he became professor of ...
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Amalie Munster

aka: Münster
borndied
17671814
a Danish courtier, translator and poet. She was a leading culture personality at the royal Danish court, where she was the lady in waiting of Princess Juliane Sophie of Denmark 1805-09 and then of Princess Caroline of Denmark, and an acquaintance of Baggesen and Oehlenschläger, whose poems she translated. She published her own poems, "Amaliens poetische Ver...
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Henriette-Julie de Murat

borndied
16681716, Sep 9
an aristocratic French writer of the late 17th century. She most likely spent most of her childhood in Paris. In 1697 she published Memoirs of the Countess of M***, a two-volume collection of false "memoirs" which was meant as a response to Charles de Saint-Évremond's 1696 book Memoirs of the Life of Count D*** before his Retirement, which had portrayed wom...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Ludovico Antonio Muratori

borndied
1672, Oct 211750, Jan 23
an Italian historian, notable as a leading scholar of his age, and for his discovery of the Muratorian fragment, the earliest known list of New Testament books. Born to a poor family in Vignola, near Modena, he was first instructed by the Jesuits, studied law, philosophy, and theology at the University of Modena, and was ordained a priest in 1694. The follow...
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Sir William Mure

borndied
15941657
a Scottish writer and politician. Mure’s early, unpublished works appear to date from 1611 to 1617, and include love-lyrics (the tunes to which they are to be sung are specified in several cases), eleven miscellaneous sonnets, a ‘Hymne’ beginning 'Help, help, O Lord! sueit saviour aryse', in a complex verse form presumably reflecting an existing song m...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Lukijan Musicki

aka: Mušicki
borndied
1777, Jan 271837, Mar 15
a Serbian poet, prose writer, and polyglot. On leaving school with little means of support, he devoted himself to letters, and in 1800 published a collection of poems in Serbian magazines and journals. With Georgije Magaraševi? and Pavel Jozef Šafárik he published the Serpski Letopis. In 1828, at the age of 51, he was finally elevated from archimandrite t...
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Alfred de Musset

borndied
1810, Dec 111857, May 2
a French dramatist, poet, and novelist. Alfred de Musset entered the lycée Henri-IV at the age of nine, where in 1827 he won the Latin essay prize in the Concours général. The tale of his celebrated love affair with George Sand in 1833-1835 is told from his point of view in his autobiographical novel La Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle (The Confession o...
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Timeline (3)Links (1)

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