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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 Governance

Richard Pace

borndied
1482 ca1536, Jun 28
an English diplomat of the Tudor period. In 1509, he accompanied Cardinal Christopher Bainbridge, Archbishop of York, to Rome, and he remained in the service of the Archbishop until that man's death by poisoning in 1514; he was instrumental in bringing the murderer to justice. In 1515, upon his return to England, he entered the service of Cardinal more
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Artists

Francisco Pacheco

bornactivedied
15711611-16441654
a Spanish painter, best known as the teacher and father-in-law of Diego Velázquez and Alonzo Cano, and for his textbook on painting that is an important source for the study of 17th-century practice in Spain. He is described by some as the "Vasari of Seville": vo...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ExplorersClergy

Pedro Paez

aka: Páez
bornactivedied
15641589-16221622, May 25
a Spanish Jesuit missionary in Ethiopia. Páez is considered by many experts on Ethiopia to be the most effective Catholic missionary in Ethiopia. He is believed to be the first European to see and describe the source of the Blue Nile. His two-volume História da Ethiópia (History of Ethiopia) is regarded by scholars of Ethiopian history as one of the most ...
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Timeline (1)Links (3)


Ephraim Pagit

borndied
1575 ca1647
an English clergyman and heresiographer. His Heresiography of 1645 was a precursor of the better-known Gangraena, and is a well-referenced account of contemporary sectarian Protestantism in England. In fact the Oxford English Dictionary indicates that the title of this book was a neologism, derived by analogy from Christianography, an earlier title, to indic...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Artists

Susanna Paine

aka: Susannah, Susan
borndied
1792, Jun 91862, Nov 10
an American portrait artist in New England in the 19th century. She published poetry, a Christmas hymn, a novel, and an autobiography entitled Roses and Thorns, or Recollections of an Artist. She traveled throughout Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maine accepting commissions for portraits of individuals or families from 1826 through 1862. Paine was "a woman...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Thomas Paine [2]

bornactivedied
1736, Jan 291761-18041809, Jun 8
an English-American political activist, philosopher, political theorist and revolutionary. One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, he authored the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and he inspired the rebels in 1776 to declare independence from Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era rhetoric of transnat...
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Timeline (6)Links (8)


William Painter

aka: Paynter
borndied
15440 ca1595, Feb
an English author and translator. The first volume of his The Palace of Pleasure appeared in 1566, and was dedicated to the earl of Warwick. It included sixty tales, and was followed in the next year by a second volume containing thirty-four new ones.
Links (1)


Francis Palgrave

borndied
1788, Jul1861, Jul 6
an English archivist and historian. He was Deputy Keeper (chief executive) of the Public Record Office from its foundation in 1838 until his death; and he is also remembered for his many scholarly publications. Palgrave was called to the bar in 1827 (after a long period working for solicitors, 1803–1822). In 1822, he had advocated publishing the national r...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Scientists

Peter Simon Pallas

aka: Pall
borndied
1741, Sep 221811, Sep 8
a Prussian zoologist and botanist who worked in Russia between 1767 and 1810. Peter Simon Pallas was born in Berlin, the son of Professor of Surgery Simon Pallas. He studied with private tutors and took an interest in natural history, later attending the University of Halle and the University of Göttingen. In 1760, he moved to the University of Leiden and p...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Simon Pallas

borndied
16941770, Jul 24
a Prussian physician. Pallas was born in Berlin, where he remained through his life. He was professor of surgery at the Collegium medico-chirurgicum, and first surgeon at the Charité hospital. He was considered a bold surgeon, and wrote a number of textbooks on the subject. He was the father of famous zoologist and botanist Peter Simon Pallas, and of physic...
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Links (1)


Roger Palmer

aka: 1st Earl of Castlemaine
borndied
16341705
an English courtier, diplomat, and politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1660. He was also a noted Catholic writer. The writings of Roger Palmer, Earl of Castlemaine, include the Catholique Apology (1666), The Compendium [of the Popish Plot trials] (1679) and The Earl of Castlemaine's Manifesto (1681).
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Artists

Antonio Palomino

borndied
16531725, Apr 13
a Spanish painter of the Baroque period, and a writer on art, author of El Museo pictórico y escala óptica, which contains a large amount of important biographical material on Spanish artists. He studied philosophy, theology and law at Córdoba, and had lessons in painting from Juan de Valdés Leal, who visited there in 1672, and afterwards from Juan de Al...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

John Palsgrave

aka: Pagrave
bornactivedied
1485 ca1513-15451554
a priest of Henry VIII of England's court. He is known as a tutor in the royal household, and as a textbook author. He composed L'esclarcissement de la langue francoyse (printed in 1530 in London and dedicated to Henry VIII). This book — written in English despit...
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Links (1)


Robert Paltock

borndied
16971767
an English novelist and attorney. His most famous work is The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, a Cornish Man (1751),somewhat on the same plan as Robinson Crusoe, the special feature being the gawry, or flying woman, whom hero discovered on his island, and married.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in PhysiciansScientists

Paracelsus

aka: Theophrastus von Hohenheim, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim
borndied
1493 ca1541, Sep 24
a Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the German Renaissance. He was a pioneer in several aspects of the "medical revolution" of the Renaissance, emphasizing the value of observation in combination with received wisdom. He is credited as the "father of toxicology". Paracelsus also had a substantial impact as a prophet or diviner, h...
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Links (1)


François-Augustin de Paradis de Moncrif

borndied
16871770, Nov 19
a French writer and poet, of a family originally of Scots origin. He was appointed royal historiographer to Louis XV of France. His parody of owlishly pedantic scholarship, Histoire des chats, and the protection of the house of Orléans gained him entry to the Académie française. Maurepas records in his memoirs that at the induction ceremony, a member let ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in PhysiciansInventors

Ambroise Pare

aka: Paré
borndied
1510 ca1590, Dec 20
a French barber surgeon who served in that role for kings Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III. He is considered one of the fathers of surgery and modern forensic pathology and a pioneer in surgical techniques and battlefield medicine, especially in the t...
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Timeline (1)Links (1)Notes (1)


Cross-listed in Explorers

Mungo Park

borndied
1771, Sep 111806
a Scottish explorer of the African continent. He was the first Westerner known to have travelled to the central portion of the Niger River. In 1794 he offered his services to the African Association, then looking for a successor to Major Daniel Houghton, who had been sent in 1790 to discover the course of the Niger River and had died in the Sahara. Supporte...
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Timeline (1)Links (1)


Henry Parker

aka: 10th Baron Morley
borndied
1476/80/811553/56
an English peer and translator. He was a man of literary attainments and translated some of the writings of Plutarch, Seneca, Cicero and others into English.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Robert Parker

borndied
15691614
an English Puritan clergyman and scholar. He became minister of a separatist congregation in Holland where he died while in exile for his heterodoxy. The Reverend Cotton Mather wrote of Parker as "one of the greatest scholars in the English Nation, and in some s...
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Links (1)Notes (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Samuel Parker the Elder

borndied
16401688, Mar 21
an English churchman, of strong Erastian views and a fierce opponent of Dissenters. His political position is often compared with that of Thomas Hobbes, but there are also clear differences; he was also called in his time a Latitudinarian, but this is not someth...
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Links (1)


Samuel Parker the Younger

borndied
16811730
an English writer and nonjuror. After early schooling in Kent, Parker attended Trinity College, Oxford, but left after several years, c. 1700, without taking a degree, evidently because he was unwilling to take the oath of allegiance, which was required of all who stood for degrees. Parker was an accomplished writer and translator.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Richard Parkes

borndied
1559unknown
an English clergyman, known as a controversialist. In 1604 he wrote against Andrew Willet. His purpose was to support the Augustinian view of the article of faith respecting Christ's descent into hell, against the Calvinistic view of the Puritans, who stood out against the growing popularity of Jacobus Arminius.
Links (1)


Francis Parkman Jr.

bornactivedied
1823, Sep 161846-18921893, Nov 8
an American historian, best known as author of The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life and his monumental seven-volume France and England in North America. These works are still valued as historical sources and as literature. He was also a leading horticulturist, briefly a professor of Horticulture at Harvard University an...
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Timeline (1)Links (7)Notes (2)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Thomas Parnell

bornactivedied
1679, Sep 111705-17181718, Oct 24
an Anglo-Irish poet and clergyman who was a friend of both Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. He spent much of his time in London, where he participated with Po...
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Links (9)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Caleb Hillier Parry

borndied
17551822
an English physician, who is remembered for Parry–Romberg syndrome, first described in work published in 1825, after his death. Parry's doctoral dissertation was De Rabie Contagiosa. He habitually noted down case histories, and a work Elements of Pathology (1815) was completed before he was disabled by illness.
Links (1)


Eliza Parsons

borndied
17391811, Feb 5
an English Gothic novelist. Her most famous novels in this genre are The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) and The Mysterious Warning (1796) – two of the seven Gothic titles recommended as reading by a character in Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

James Parsons

borndied
17051770, Apr 4
an English physician, antiquary and author. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and was assistant foreign secretary of the society about 1750. He was also Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and a member of the Spalding Society and of the Society of Arts.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in InventorsScientists

Blaise Pascal

bornactivedied
1623, Jun 191642-16591662, Aug 19
a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Christian philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work ...
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Links (17)Notes (1)


Pasquill

aka: the Cavaliero
bornactivedied
unknown1589-1590unknown
the pseudonym adopted by a defender of the Anglican hierarchy in an English political and theological controversy of the 1580s known as the "Marprelate controversy" after "Martin Marprelate", the nom de plume of a Puritan critic of the Anglican establishment. Three tracts critical of Martin Marprelate were issued under the name of Pasquill in 1589 and 1590.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Charles Patin

borndied
16331693
a French physician and numismatist. He was the son of Guy Patin, headmaster of the school of medicine in Paris, and a friend of Jacob Spon. Trained first by his father, he obtained a law degree and then chose to study medicine. He became best known for his numismatic work. He married the moralist author more
Links (1)


Charlotte-Catherine Patin

bornactivedied
1672 ca1683-17441744
a 17th- and 18th-century French writer and art critic. Granddaughter of medical doctor and letter writer Guy Patin, and daughter of medical doctor and numismatist Charles Patin and moralist writer more
Links (3)


Cross-listed in Artists

Gabrielle-Charlotte Patin

bornactivedied
16661680sunknown
a French numismatist, writer and painter during the 17th century. Granddaughter of medical doctor and letter writer Guy Patin, daughter of medical doctor and numismatist Charles Patin and moralist writer Madeleine Patin, as well as sister of the writer and art critic Charlotte-Catherine Patin, Gabrielle-Charlotte Patin published a Latin work on Phoenician nu...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Guy Patin

aka: Gui
borndied
16011672, Aug 30
a French doctor and man of letters. Patin was doyen (or dean) of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris (1650–1652) and professor in the Collège de France starting in 1655. His scientific and medical works are not considered particularly enlightened by modern medical scholars (he has sometimes been compared to the doctors in the works of more
Links (1)


Henri Patin

borndied
1793, Aug 211876, Feb 19
a French writer and translator from ancient Greek and Latin. He collaborated with many newspapers, including the Revue des Deux Mondes, The Globe and Journal des savants. He is known both for his translations of Greek and Latin for his studies on the Greek tragedians, a work that opened the doors of the French Academy to which he was elected in 1842.
Links (1)


Madeleine Patin

aka: Madeleine Homanet
borndied
16101682
a French moralist author. The wife of medical doctor and numismatist Charles Patin, and daughter of medical doctor and letter writer Guy Patin, Madeleine Patin wrote philosophical and moral reflections. This genre was popular in Europe during the period, and wa...
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Coventry Patmore

borndied
18231896
an English poet and critic best known for The Angel in the House, his narrative poem about an ideal happy marriage. In 1844 he published a small volume of Poems, which was original but uneven. Patmore, distressed at its reception, bought up the remainder of the edition and destroyed it.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Legal

Olivier Patru

borndied
16041681, Jan 16
a French lawyer and writer. He was born in Paris. Patru actively worked on the development of rules of language and the systematic encouragement of prose, particularly through the translation of speakers and famous historians. In addition, he actively participated in preparing the Dictionary of the Academy, which he wanted to see the judgments relied on defi...
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Links (1)


William Patten

borndied
1510 ca1598+
an author, scholar and government official during the reigns of King Edward VI and Queen Elizabeth I. In April 1570 he produced a vocabulary and alphabet to accompany an Armenian psalter owned by Archbishop Matthew Parker, the first work in that language in Englan...
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Links (1)


Jean Paul

aka: Johann Paul Friedrich Richter
borndied
1763, Mar 211825, Nov 14
a German Romantic writer, best known for his humorous novels and stories. Jean Paul occupies an unusual position in German literature and has always divided the literary public. Some hold him in highest veneration while others treat his work with indifference.
Links (1)


Susan Paul

borndied
18091841
an African-American abolitionist from Boston, Massachusetts. A primary school teacher and member of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, Paul also wrote the first biography of an African American published in the United States. The book, Memoir of James Jackson, was published in 1835.
Links (1)


Olav Paulsson

aka: Paulssøn
borndied
18221896
a Norwegian bailiff, writer and politician. In Bergen, he was among the founders of Vestmannalaget in 1868. Led by Henrik Krohn, Vestmannalaget was a Landsmål association for Western Norway, and Paulssøn helped publish texts in this written form of the Norwegian language.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Claus Pavels

borndied
1769, Jan 81822, Feb 16
a Norwegian priest and diarist. His diaries from 1812–1822 are an important source for cultural and biographical history. He was the Bishop of the Diocese of Bjørgvin from 1817 until 1822. Pavels was also present at the first defence of a doctorate thesis in Norway, at the University 18 June 1817, when Frederik Holst defended his thesis, "Morbus, quem Rad...
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Links (1)


Raimond Beccarie de Pavie

aka: Seigneur de Fourquevaux
borndied
15081574, Jul 4
Born in Toulouse, died in Narbonne. Author of Instructions sur le faict de la Guerre (Paris: Michel Vascosan pour Galliot du Pré, 1548). Extracts in English translation Beatrice Heuser: The Strategy Makers: Thoughts on War and Society from Machiavelli to Clausewitz (Santa Monica, CA: Greenwood/Praeger, 2010), pp. 32–49
Links (1)


Karolina Pavlova

borndied
1807, Jul 221893, Dec 14
a 19th-century Russian poet and novelist who stood out from other writers on account of her unique appreciation of exceptional rhymes and imagery. Although Pavlova’s poetry was ill accepted by her contemporaries, it was rediscovered in the 1900s by symbolists. Valery Bryusov combined Pavlova’s work into two volumes which he published in 1915.
Links (1)


Thomas Love Peacock

borndied
1785, Oct 181866, Jan 23
an English novelist, poet, and official of the East India Company. He was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and they influenced each other's work. Peacock wrote satirical novels, each with the same basic setting — characters at a table discussing a...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Composers

Robert Lucas de Pearsall

borndied
1795, Mar 141856, Aug 5
an amateur English composer. Many of his compositions were not published until after his death, and even now, many remain in manuscript. He was also the author of several articles and letters that contributed to scholarly understanding of early music in the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions and helped to re-establish plainsong, Renaissance polyphony, a...
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Links (1)


Ibrahim Pecevi

aka: Peçevi
borndied
15721650
a Turkish historian (chronicler) of the Ottoman Empire. Peçevi Efendi is famous for his two-volume book Tarih-i Peçevi ("Pecevi's History") of the history of the Ottoman Empire, the main reference for the period 1520–1640.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Cristobal de Pedraza

borndied
14851553
a Spanish bishop. Cristobal de Pedraza, arrived in Puerto Horses on September 13, 1538. In 1545 he started work in the Province of Comayagua (Honduras) with the mission to bring Christianity to the Indians, he was a priest inclined to education and was known as the "Protector of the Indians", his major work is the "Report of the Province of Honduras" which ...
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Links (1)


George Peele

borndied
1556, Jul 251596, Nov 9
an English translator, poet, and dramatist, who is most noted for his supposed but not universally accepted collaboration with William Shakespeare on the play Titus Andronicus.
Links (3)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Magnus Pegel

aka: Pegelius, Pegelow
borndied
1547, May 151619
a German doctor and mathematician. Pegel was born in Rostock in Pomerania/Germany and was one of the first authors to write (in 1604) about the theory of blood transfusions. He died at Stettin.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Scientists

Bertrand Pelletier

borndied
1761, Jul 311797, Jul 21
an 18th-century French pharmacist and chemist. On the recommendation of Darcet, Hilaire Rouelle's widow appointed him managing director of the pharmacy rue Jacob in 1783. The following year, Pelletier was master apothecary, married Marguerite Sedillot and bought Rouelle's pharmacy. From 1783, Pelletier was a student at the Paris Faculty of Medicine, where he...
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Links (1)


Jacques Pelletier du Mans

borndied
15171582
a humanist, poet and mathematician of the French Renaissance. In 1541 he published the first French translation of Horace's Ars poetica and during this period he also published numerous scientific and mathematical treatises.
Links (1)


Joseph Pellicer de Ossau y Tovar

aka: José
borndied
16021679
a Spanish publicist for Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, poet, genealogist, and historian of Castile and Aragon. José Pellicer was born in Zaragoza. He published a commentary on Luis de Góngora in 1630, and his own poetry was influenced by that of Góngora. He was a chronicler of the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon. He died in Madrid.
Links (1)Notes (1)


Paul Pellisson

borndied
1624, Oct 301693, Feb 7
a French author. Going to Paris with letters of introduction to Valentin Conrart, a fellow Calvinist, he was introduced to the members of the Académie française. Pellisson undertook to be their historian, and in 1653 published a Relation contenant l'histoire de l’Académie française.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Henry Pendleton

borndied
unknown1557, Sep
an English churchman, a theologian and controversialist. He was born in Manchester, died in London. He was appointed chaplain to Bishop Edmund Bonner, for whom he wrote two homilies: "Of the Church what it is", and "Of the Authority of the Church". He also wrote "Declaration in his sickness of his faith or belief in all points as the Catholic Church teacheth...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

James W.C. Pennington

aka: James William Charles
borndied
1807 ca1870, Oct 22
an African-American orator, minister, writer, and abolitionist active in Brooklyn, New York. He escaped at the age of 19 from slavery in western Maryland and reached New York. After working in Brooklyn and gaining some education, he was admitted to Yale University as its first black student. He completed studies and was ordained as a minister in the Congrega...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

John Penrose

borndied
1778, Dec 151859, Aug 9
a Church of England clergyman and theological writer. Penrose was ordained at Exeter in 1801. He held a number of ecclesiastical positions throughout his lifetime. In 1814 Penrose married Elizabeth Cartwright, a teacher and author of children's books under the name Mrs Markham. The couple were the parents of three sons of whom Francis Penrose was an architec...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in NavalGovernance

Samuel Pepys

bornactivedied
1633, Feb 231655-16911703, May 26
an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most well known for the diary he kept for a decade while still a young man. His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early development of the Royal Navy. Although he had no maritime experience, he rose by patronage, hard work, and his talent for administration to be th...
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Timeline (2)Links (6)


William Percy

borndied
15741648
an English poet and playwright. Although Percy was not a very talented poet his circle included better writers such as Charles Fitzgeoffrey who, in his collection of Latin epigrams Affaniae praises Percy's skills. Others in the same group were the Mychelbourne brothers, Edward, Lawrence, and Thomas, all of whom feature in Percy's poems. A later member was Th...
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Links (1)


Benedict Pereira

aka: Pereyra, Benet Perera, Benet Pererius
borndied
1536, Mar 41610, Mar 6
a Spanish Jesuit philosopher, theologian, and exegete. He published eight works, and left a vast deal of manuscript. (Sommervogel, infra, mentions twelve sets.) His main philosophical work is De communibus omnium rerum naturalium principiis et affectionibus libri quindecim (Rome, 1576). The main difficulties of the Book of Genesis are met in Commentariorum e...
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Links (4)


Bernardo Perez de Chinchon

aka: Pérez de Chinchón
borndied
1490 ca1556 ca
a Valencian Roman Catholic writer. Not too much is known about his life. Pérez de Chinchón translated Erasmus into Castilian. Employed by Juan de Borja, 3rd Duke of Gandía, he also wrote works of Christian apologetics directed against Islam.
Links (1)


Joan Perez de Lazarraga

borndied
1548 ca1605, Apr 11
a Basque writer, who was born and died in Larrea, Álava. Lazarraga, the lord of Larrea, and a member of a family originating in Oñati. As a writer, he was one of the few Renaissance authors writing in Basque. In around 1567, he left a collection of written papers, together forming a pastoral novel titled Silbero, Silbia, Doristeo, and Sirena, in 21 copies....
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Links (1)


Andres Perez de Ribas

aka: Andrés Pérez de Ribas
borndied
15761655, Mar 26
a Spanish Jesuit missionary, and historian of north-western Mexico. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1602, coming at once to America, and finishing his novitiate in Mexico in 1604. He left numerous works, religious and historical, most of which are still in manuscript, but his reputation as an historian rests upon his history of the Jesuit missions of Mexi...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Diego Perez de Valdivia

aka: Pérez de Valdivia
borndied
1520/241589, Feb 28
a Spanish disciple of John of Ávila who wrote on lay spirituality. Born in Baeza, Pérez de Valdivia was sent by John of Ávila to study at Salamanca. He taught philosophy at Granada for three years before becoming Professor of Holy Scripture at the University of Baeza from 1549 to 1577. He was archdeacon of Jaén from 1569 to 1574, but subjected to the Inq...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

William Perkins

borndied
15581602
an influential English cleric and Cambridge theologian, receiving both a B.A. and M.A. from the university in 1581 and 1584 respectively, and also one of the foremost leaders of the Puritan movement in the Church of England during the Elizabethan era. Although not entirely accepting of the Church of England's ecclesiastical practices, Perkins conformed to ma...
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Antoine-Joseph Pernety

aka: Dom Pernety
borndied
1716, Feb 231796, Oct 16
a French writer. At various times he was a Benedictine, and librarian of Frederic the Great of Prussia. Together with the Polish Count Tadeusz Grabianka, also influenced by the Christian mysticism of Swedenborg he founded in 1760 the secret society of ‘Rite hermétique’ or Illuminati of Avignon. Pernety took part in the 1763-64 expedition under Louis Ant...
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Links (1)


Charles Perrault

borndied
1628, Jan 121703, May 16
a French author and member of the Académie Française. He laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from pre-existing folk tales. The best known of his tales include Le Petit Chaperon Rouge (Little Red Riding Hood), Cendrillon (Cinderella), Le Chat Botté (Puss in Boots), La Belle au bois Dormant (The Sleeping Bea...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

John Perrin

borndied
1558 ca1615, May 9
an English churchman and academic, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford and one of the translators of the Authorised King James Version of the Bible. He was Regius Professor of Greek from 1597 to 1615. Nominated to the Second Oxford Company of translators by King James, he found it onerous to continue as Regius Professor, and did not fulfil the duties of the ...
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Links (1)


Sir James Perrot

borndied
15711636, Feb 4
a Welsh writer and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1597 and 1629. Perrot wrote Discovery of Discontented Minds (1596) and The First Part of the Considerations of Humane Conditions (1600). He also wrote, in later life, Meditations and Prayers on the Lord's Prayer and Ten Commandments (1630). He was knighted in 1603 and was ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Henry Perry [1]

aka: Parry
borndied
1560/611617
a Welsh Anglican priest and linguistic scholar. He obtained various parish positions on Anglesey, in Rhoscolyn, Trefdraeth and Llanfachraeth, also becoming a canon and prebendary of Bangor Cathedral. In addition to his parish work, Perry was a skilled linguist; he was highly regarded by the lexicographer John Davies. He was said by Davies to have worked on t...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Military

Maurice Persat

borndied
1788, Apr 301858
a French officer and writer, participant of the Napoleonic wars and revolutionary wars in Latin America, Greece and Spain. He was a captain of cavalry in Napoleon's army. He received the Order of the "Legion of Honor" from the hands of Napoleon in 1813. In the years 1838-1839, he wrote "Memoirs 1806-1844", which, however, remained unpublished until 1910.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Educators

Krikor Peshtimaldjian

borndied
17781839, Jan
a prominent ethnic Armenian philosopher, educator, translator, and linguist. He was a key figure in the Armenian reawakening and reformist movement in the 19th century. Early in his life he started to compile a dictionary of Classical Armenian, intended to comprise two volumes, but the project was discontinued. In 1829 he published Kraganutyun Haykazian Lezv...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Astronomers

Christian August Friedrich Peters

borndied
1806, Sep 71880, May 8
a German astronomer. He was the father of astronomer Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Peters. He was born in Hamburg and died in Kiel. Peters was the son of a merchant and, although he did not attend secondary school regularly, he obtained a good knowledge of mathematics and astronomy. In 1826 he became assistant to Heinrich Christian Schumacher at Altona Observatory ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Pierre Petit

borndied
16171687
a French scholar, physician, poet and Latin writer. Born at Paris, Petit studied medicine at Montpellier, where he took the degree of MD, though he did not practice medicine afterwards. Returning to Paris, he resided for some time with the president Lamoignon, as tutor to his sons, and afterwards as a literary companion with Aymar de Nicolai, first president...
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Links (1)


Pierre Petitclair

borndied
1813, Oct 121860, Aug 15
one of the first native French Canadian writers. He wrote two popular plays of the 19th century, La Donation (1842) and Une partie de campagne (1857), the latter notable for using rural québécois speech for the first time on stage. He also composed a number of poems throughout his life. He started out in studies of law, but flourished as an artist while wo...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Heinrich Petraeus

borndied
15891620
a German physician and writer. He was Professor of Medicine at the University of Marburg. He was son-in-law of the chemist Johannes Hartmann (1568–1631). He is known for his Nosologia Harmonica Dogmatica et Hermetica. This was an attempt to find concord between rival medical theories of the time: those of the progressive chemical physicians (exemplified by...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Military

Joseph von Petrasch

borndied
1714, Oct 191772, May 15
a soldier, writer and philologist. In 1746 he founded the Olomouc-based Societas incognitorum, the first Enlightenment-inspired learned society in the Habsburg territories. As a young man he pursued a military career as adjutant to Prince Eugene of Savoy, accumulating substantial wealth. On 27 March 1750 Petrasch was able to buy the lordship of Nové Zámky ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyGovernance

Petar II Petrovic-Njegos

aka: Petrovic-Njegoš
bornactivedied
1813, Nov 11830-18511851, Oct 19
a Prince-Bishop (vladika) of Montenegro, poet and philosopher whose works are widely considered some of the most important in Montenegrin and Serbian literature. Njegoš was born in the village of Njeguši, near Montenegro's then-capital Cetinje. He was educated at several Montenegrin monasteries, and became the country's spiritual and political leader follo...
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Links (1)


Sir William Petty [1]

borndied
1623, May 261687, Dec 16
an English economist, scientist and philosopher. He first became prominent serving Oliver Cromwell and Commonwealth in Ireland. He developed efficient methods to survey the land that was to be confiscated and given to Cromwell's soldiers. He also managed to re...
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Links (1)


Ida Laura Pfeiffer

borndied
1797, Oct 141858, Oct 27
an Austrian traveler and travel book author. She was one of the first female explorers, whose popular books were translated into seven languages. She was a member of geographical societies of both Berlin and Paris, but not of Royal Geographical Society in London due to her sex. In 1846 she started on a journey round the world, visiting Brazil, Chile and othe...
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Timeline (1)Links (1)


Cross-listed in PhysiciansLegal

Thomas Phaer

aka: Phaire, Fayre, Faer, Phayre, Phayer
borndied
1510 ca1560, Aug 12
an English lawyer, pediatrician, and author. He is best known as the author of The Boke of Chyldren, published in 1545, which was the first book on pediatrics written in the English language. He published Natura brevium in 1535, and Newe Boke of Presidentes in 1543. He published The Regiment of Life in 1544, a translation of a French version of the Latin tex...
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Links (1)


W.W. Phelps

borndied
1792, Feb 171872, Mar 7
an early leader of the Latter Day Saint movement. He was a printer, editor, song-writer, scribe to Joseph Smith, and assistant president of the church in Missouri. Phelps is probably best known for his legacy of Mormon hymns, many of which appear in the current e...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Composers

Francois-Andre Danican Philidor

aka: François-André
borndied
17261795
a French composer and chess player. He contributed to the early development of the opéra comique. He was also regarded as the best chess player of his age; his book Analyse du jeu des Échecs was considered a standard chess manual for at least a century, and a well-known chess opening and a checkmate method are both named after him.
Links (1)


Ambrose Philips

borndied
16741749, Jun 18
an English poet and politician. His contemporary reputation rested on his pastorals and epistles, particularly the description of winter addressed by him from Copenhagen (1709) to the Earl of Dorset. In T. H. Ward's English Poets, however, he is represented by two of the simple and charming pieces addressed to the infant children of John Carteret, 2nd Lord C...
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Links (1)


Katherine Philips

borndied
1632, Jan 11664, Jun 22
an Anglo-Welsh poet, translator, and woman of letters. She achieved renown as translator of Pierre Corneille's Pompée and Horace, and for her editions of poetry. The literary atmosphere of her circle is preserved in the excellent Letters of Orinda to Poliarchus, published by Bernard Lintot in 1705 and 1709. Philips's translations and poems consider question...
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Links (1)


John Phillip

bornactivedied
unknown1550s-1560sunknown
an English poet and dramatist of the Elizabethan era. He is known for his play The Commodye of Pacient and Meeke Grissill (aka The Plaie of Pacient Grisell), said to have been written in the late 1550s, and possibly first performed by a children's company at Nonsuch Palace in Surrey for Queen more
Links (1)


Edward Phillips

bornactivedied
1630, Aug1651-16961696 ca
an English author. His most important work is Theatrum poetarum (1675), a list of the chief poets of all ages and countries. He also wrote The New World of English Words (1658), which went through many editions; a new edition of Baker's Chronicle, of which the section on the period from 1650 to 1658 was written by himself from the royali...
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Links (1)


John Phillips

borndied
16311706
an English author, the brother of Edward Phillips, and a nephew of John Milton. He appears to have acted as unofficial secretary to Milton, but, unable to obtain...
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Links (2)


William Phiston

bornactivedied
unknown1571-1609unknown
an English translator and author. He describes himself as "a student of London", and had some leading figures of the time as patrons. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography points out that a William Phiston matriculated at Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1572. It also notes the strong Protestant tone to the Testimonie, intended as a cheaper substitute f...
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Links (1)


Alessandro Piccolomini [2]

borndied
1508, Jun 131579, Mar 12
an Italian humanist and philosopher from Siena, who promoted the popularization in the vernacular of Latin and Greek scientific and philosophical treatises. His early works include Il Dialogo della bella creanza delle donne, o Raffaella (1539) and the comedies Amor costante, and Alessandro, (other titles are erroneously attributed to him) which were sponsore...
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Links (3)


Amedee Pichot

aka: Amédée
borndied
1795, Nov 31877, Feb 12
a French novelist, historian and translator. There is very little information available about the details of his life. He received a degree as a medical doctor in Montpellier in 1817, but turned to literature and especially the English literary history. He was a prolific translator, translating the complete works of Lord more
Links (1)


Francois Pidou de Saint Olon

aka: François
borndied
16401720, Sep 27
a French diplomat under Louis XIV. in 1689, Pidou de Saint Olon was then nominated as ambassador to the court of the Moroccan ruler Mulay Ismail, in view of the signature of a commercial treaty. This responded to the Embassy of Mohammad Temim to Louis XIV in 1682. ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

James Pilkington

borndied
15201576
an English bishop and writer. He was born in Rivington, Lancashire, England. He became the first Protestant Bishop of Durham from 1561 until his death in 1576. He founded Rivington Grammar School and was an Elizabethan author and orator. One of the bishop's chief contributions to protestantism was his interest in education, of which he was a keen promoter.
Links (1)


Laetitia Pilkington

borndied
1709 ca1750, Jul 29
a celebrated Anglo-Irish poet. Her Memoirs are the source of much of what is known of the personalities and habits of Jonathan Swift and others. In 1743, she began seeking, on Cibber's advice, subscribers for her Memoirs. more
Links (1)


Cross-listed in PhysiciansInventors

Pierre Adolphe Piorry

bornactivedied
1794, Dec 311816-1850s1879, May 29
a French physician born in Poitiers. He invented pleximetry (a method for the investigation of internal organs using percussion) and was the creator of medical terms toxin, toxemia and septicemia. He published works on numerous aspects of medicine, and had some success as a poet. One of his better known poems was Dieu, L'Ame et la Nature (1853).
Links (2)


George Pirie

borndied
17991870
a Canadian newspaper publisher. He emigrated to Canada from Aberdeen, Scotland. In 1848 he took over the two-year-old Guelph Herald and moved with his family to downtown Guelph. The printing and publishing office for the Herald was on Wyndham Street. Mr. Pirie was a poet, and was remembered as one of Canada's Scottish Canadian poets in a 1900 book published ...
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Links (1)


Johannes Piscator

borndied
1546, Mar 271625, Jul 26
a German Reformed theologian, known as a Bible translator and textbook writer. He was a prolific writer, and initially moved around as he held a number of positions. Some scholarly confusion as to whether there was more than one person of the name was addressed in a paper by Walter Ong.
Links (1)


Aleksey Pisemsky

borndied
1821, Mar 111881, Jan 21
a Russian novelist and dramatist who was regarded as an equal of Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoyevsky in the late 1850s, but whose reputation suffered a spectacular decline after his fall-out with Sovremennik magazine in the early 1860s. A realistic playwright, along with Aleksandr Ostrovsky he was responsible for the first dramatization of ordinary people i...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Legal

Francois Pithou

aka: François
borndied
15431621
a French lawyer and author. There is very little information available about his life. He was born and died in Troyes and was the brother of Jean, Nicolas and Pierre Pithou. He wrote Glossarium ad libros capitularium (1588) and Traité de l'excommunication et de l'interdit, etc. (1587).He also wrote in Latin.


Cross-listed in Legal

Pierre Pithou

aka: Petrus Pithoeus
borndied
1539, Nov 11596, Nov 1
a French lawyer and scholar. He was born at Troyes. From childhood he loved literature, and his father Pierre encouraged this interest. Pithou wrote many legal and historical books, besides preparing editions of several ancient writers. His earliest publication was Adversariorum subsectorum lib. II. (1565). In 1569, he became the first to publish Landolfus ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Educators

Isaac Pitman

borndied
1813, Jan 41897, Jan 22
an English teacher who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman shorthand. He first proposed this in Stenographic Soundhand in 1837. He was also the vice president of the Vegetarian Society. Pitman was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1894...
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Timeline (2)Links (1)


Joseph Pitts

borndied
16631735 ca
an Englishman who was taken into slavery by Barbary pirates from Algeria in 1678 at the age of fourteen or fifteen. Little is known about Pitts aside from what is revealed in his narrative concerning his time held captive in Northern Africa, during which time he went through three masters ranging widely in their cruelty towards him over the course of more th...
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Links (1)


Francis Place [2]

borndied
1771, Nov 31854, Jan 1
an English social reformer. In the early 1820s he became a Malthusian, believing that as the population increased it would outstrip the food supply. Despite himself having fathered fifteen children, he advocated the use of contraception, although was not specific about in what forms. It was on this topic that he wrote his only published book, the influentia...
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Links (1)


James Planche

aka: Planché
borndied
1796, Feb 271880, May 30
a British dramatist, antiquary and officer of arms. Over a period of approximately 60 years he wrote, adapted, or collaborated on 176 plays in a wide range of genres including extravaganza, farce, comedy, burletta, melodrama and opera. Planché was responsible for introducing historically accurate costume into nineteenth century British theatre, and subseque...
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Links (1)


Arabella Plantin

borndied
1700unknown
an eighteenth century British novelist. She was the author of The Ingrateful (Or, The Just Revenge) (1727) and Love Led Astray (Or, the Mutual Inconstancy) (1731). The Ingrateful is a story of an Italian woman who murders her husband after he has spent her fortune, and Love Led Astray is a pastoral tale of crossed lovers. The literary critic Bridget G. MacCa...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Artists

Ernst Zacharias Platner

borndied
1773, Oct 11855, Oct 14
a German painter and writer born in Leipzig. He initially took art classes at the Academy in Leipzig under Adam Friedrich Oeser, then continued his education in Dresden (from 1790), Vienna (from 1797) and Rome (1800), where he remained for the rest of his life. In 1823 he was appointed consul to the Saxon Royal Court in Rome. With Karl Bunsen, Barthold Georg...
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Links (1)


Carl Nicolai Stoud Platou

borndied
1809, Jun 261888, Sep 11
a Norwegian civil servant and politician. He took his examen artium in 1827 and graduated from the university with the cand.jur. degree in 1832. He was hired as a clerk in the Norwegian Ministry of Justice in 1833, the same year his father died. He was later promoted, but started as an auditor in Christianssand in 1844. From 1846 to 1853 he was an assessor i...
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Links (1)


Gabriel Plattes

borndied
1600 ca1644
an English writer on agriculture and science, and also now recognised as the author of the utopian work Description of the Famous Kingdome of Macaria, often attributed to Samuel Hartlib under whose name it was published. He was one of the earliest advocates in England of an improved system of husbandry, and devoted time and money to practical experiments. He...
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Links (1)


Pyotr Pletnyov

borndied
1792, Aug 101865, Dec 29
a minor Russian poet and literary critic, who rose to become the dean of the Saint Petersburg University (1840–61) and academician of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1841). Pletnyov befriended the poet Alexander Pushkin, who dedicated his novel in vers...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

William Swan Plumer

bornactivedied
1802, Jul 261834-18801880, Oct 22
an American clergyman, theologian and author who was recognized as an intellectual leader of the Presbyterian Church in the 1800s. Plumer was the minister of several churches during his career. From 1837 to 1845 Plumer was the editor of The Watchman of the South, a weekly Presbyterian newspaper which he had founded while serving as pastor in Richmond. He was...
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Links (5)


Rachel Plummer

borndied
18181839
the daughter of James W. Parker and the cousin of Quanah Parker, last free-roaming chief of the Comanches. An Anglo-Texan woman of Scots-Irish descent, she was kidnapped at the age of seventeen, along with her son, James Pratt Plummer, age two, and her cousins, by a Native American raiding party. Rachel Plummer's 21 months among the Comanche as a prisoner be...
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Links (1)


Edgar Allan Poe

bornactivedied
1809, Jan 191827-18491849, Oct 7
an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. Widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered t...
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Timeline (5)Links (19)


Antony Pogorelsky

borndied
17871836, Jul 9
a penname of Alexey Alexeyevich Perovsky, a Russian prose writer. Antony Pogorelsky’s remarkable set of stories Dvoinik (The Double, or My Evenings in Little Russia) (1828) was closely related to the German fantastic tradition (Serapion Brothers by Hoffman) and anticipated the famous Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka by more
Links (1)


Marko Pohlin

borndied
1735, Apr 131801, Feb 4
a Slovene philologist and author. He is generally considered the first exponent of the Age of Enlightenment in the Slovene Lands. He is best known for his book Kraynska grammatica (Carniolan Grammar), a grammar of Slovene written in German. In it, Pohlin attempted to modernize Adam Bohori?'s sixteenth-century grammar. The work is especially important for its...
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Links (1)


Benigne Poissenot

aka: Bénigne
borndied
1550 ca1586+
a French writer of the Renaissance, known for two collections of short stories. He was born in Langres. Few details are known of his life. He wrote L'Esté contenant trois journées ou sont deduictes plusieurs histoires et propos recréantifs tenus par trois écoliers (Summer, containing three days during which are narrated several stories and amusing anecdo...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Educators

Amandus Polanus

borndied
1561, Dec 161610, Jul 17
a German theologian of early Reformed orthodoxy. After his education in Troppau (Opava), Breslau (Wroclaw, Vratislav), Tübingen, Basel, and Geneva (1577–1584), he served as a tutor to the family of Zerotin in Heidelberg and Basel (1584–1590), and later taught at the Bohemian Brethren school in Ivancice. Between 1591 and 1595 he again tutored for the Zer...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Inventors

Christopher Polhem

aka: Polhammar
borndied
1661, Dec 181751, Aug 30
a Swedish scientist, inventor and industrialist. He made significant contributions to the economic and industrial development of Sweden, particularly mining. One His greatest achievement was an automated factory powered entirely by water; automation was very unusual at the time. product from the factory was the Scandinavian padlock ("Polhem locks", Swedish:...
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Links (1)


Gaetano Polidori

borndied
17641853
an Italian writer and scholar living in London. He was the son of Agostino Ansano Polidori (1714–78), a physician and poet who lived and practised in his native Bientina, near Pisa, Tuscany. He translated various literary works into Italian, notably, John Milton...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

John William Polidori

borndied
1795, Sep 71821, Aug 24
an English writer and physician. He is known for his associations with the Romantic movement and credited by some as the creator of the vampire genre of fantasy fiction. His most successful work was the short story "The Vampyre" (1819), the first published modern vampire story. Although originally and erroneously accredited to Lord more
Links (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyGovernance

Melchior de Polignac

bornactivedied
1661, Oct 111683-17421742, Nov 20
a French diplomat, Cardinal and neo-Latin poet. During the last years of Louis XIV, Abbé de Polignac enjoyed the position of Master of the King's Chapel (1713-1716). But during the Regency Polignac became involved in the Cellamare Conspiracy, which attempted to di...
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Links (5)


Edward Pollock

borndied
1823, Sep 21858, Dec 13
an American poet best known for writing "The Parting Hour" in 1857. He worked as a child in a cotton factory. He apprenticed with a sign-painter. In 1852, he moved to San Francisco, California, and became a contributor to the Pioneer magazine. In 1856, he was admitted before the California Supreme Court.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

John Pomfret

borndied
16671702
an English poet and clergyman. After graduating from Queens' College, Cambridge Pomfret was appointed rector of Maulden in Bedfordshire in 1695. He published a number of poems, and was regarded as significant enough in his time to be included by Samuel Johnson ...
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Links (1)


Alexander Pope

bornactivedied
1688, May 211709-17381744, May 30
an 18th-century English poet. He is best known for his satirical verse, as well as for his translation of Homer. Famous for his use of the heroic couplet, he is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Willi...
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Timeline (1)Links (18)


Vasili Popugaev

borndied
1778/791816 ca
a Russian poet, novelist, and translator. He was one of the leaders of the Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Popugaev's literary career was short, about ten or twelve years, but despite this modest length he was a worthwhile and important writer. He was one of the few bright voices of the political direction that arose during the r...
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Links (1)


John Pory

borndied
15721636
an English government administrator, traveller, and author of the Jacobean aopry nd Caroline eras; he is widely considered to have been the first news correspondent in English-language journalism. Early in his career, around 1597, Pory became an associate and protégé of the geographer and author more
Links (1)


Jose Maria Posada

aka: José María
borndied
18171886
a bilingual poet and journalist, in both Spanish and Galician. Posada founded La Aurora de Galicia, a magazine of literature, science, and art, in 1845. He lived in Madrid between 1851 and 1852, studying painting. Moving to Vigo, he established El Faro de Vigo (1852), the oldest newspaper in Spain (still printed today), in which much of his written work appe...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Military

Colonel Cuthbert Potter

bornactivedied
1637 ca1653-16901691
Born in England and died in Barbados. He practiced law in Lancaster County, Virginia, as early as 1653, and three years later his name appears among the justices of the Lancaster County Court. In later years he was one of the large landholders of Middlesex County and was closely associated with Ralph Wormeley, a leading member of the Council. The narrative o...
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Notes (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

John Potter

bornactivedied
1674 ca1737-17471747, Oct 10
the Archbishop of Canterbury for the Church of England from 1737-1747. He was the son of a linen-draper at Wakefield, Yorkshire. At the age of fourteen he entered University College, Oxford, and in 1693 he published notes on Plutarch's De audiendis poetis and Basil's Oratio ad juvenes. In 1694 he was elected fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford and in 1697 his...
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Links (1)Notes (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Robert Potter

borndied
17211804, Aug 9
an English clergyman of the Church of England, translator, poet and pamphleteer. He established the convention of using blank verse for Greek hexameters and rhymed verse for choruses. In 1788, Lewis Bagot, Bishop of Norwich, presented Potter as vicar to the combined parishes of Lowestoft and Kessingland, Suffolk, and as a prebendary of Norwich Cathedral, thr...
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Links (1)


Francois Pouqueville

aka: François
borndied
1770, Nov 41838, Dec 20
a French diplomat, writer, explorer, physician and historian, member of the Institut de France. First as the Turkish Sultan's hostage, then as Napoleon Bonaparte's general consul at the court of Ali Pasha of Ioannina, he travelled extensively throughout Ot...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Gabriel Powell

borndied
15761611
a Welsh Anglican priest, known for his strident anti-Catholic views. Powell was a strident anti-Catholic and wrote a number of works condemning the Roman Catholic faith and its followers. His writings included Consideration of the Papists (1604), with warnings of the appalling results that would follow if Prince Henry married a Catholic, and Disputationum. ....
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Links (1)


Marguerite Agnes Power

borndied
18151867
a novelist, writer for periodicals, and editor throughout the majority of her life. She was a respectable, hardworking writer who was frequently poor. She is often forgotten despite her many contributions. However, her legacy remains within her many works including her contributions to The Keepsake, Book of Beauty and also to the Illustrated London News and ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ComposersPerformers

Mary Ann Pownall

aka: Mary Ann Wrighten
borndied
17511796, Aug 12
an English singer, actress and composer. She wrote an autobiography entitled An Apology for he Life and Conduct of Mrs Mary Wrighten, Late a Favourite Actress and Singer, of Drury Lane Theatre, and Vauxhall Gardens.
Links (1)


Jacques Pradon

borndied
16321698, Jan 14
a French playwright. Early in his career, he was helped by Pierre Corneille and was introduced to the salons at the Hôtel de Nevers and the Hôtel de Bouillon by Madame Deshoulières. Pradon was born in Rouen and is the author of eight tragedies. His plays enjoyed a certain limited success, but were severely judged by his rival more
Links (1)


Winthrop Mackworth Praed

borndied
1802, Jul 281839, Jul 15
an English politician and poet. Praed began to study law, and in 1829 was called to the bar at the Middle Temple. On the Norfolk circuit, his prospects of advancement were bright, but his inclination was towards politics, and after a year or two he took up political life. His poems were first edited by more
Links (1)


Cross-listed in AstronomersClergyScientists

John Henry Pratt

borndied
1809, Jun 41871, Dec 28
a British clergyman, astronomer and mathematician. A Cambridge Apostle, he joined the British East India Company in 1838 as a chaplain and later became Archdeacon at Calcutta. A gifted mathematician who applied his mind to problems of geodesy and earth science, he was approached by the Surveyor General of India to examine the errors in surveys resulting from...
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Links (1)


Orson Pratt

bornactivedied
1811, Sep 191831-18791881, Oct 3
an American mathematician and religious leader who was an original member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles of the Church of the Latter Day Saints. He became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and was a leading Mormon theologian and writer until his death.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Parley P. Pratt

bornactivedied
1807, Apr 121830-18571857, May 13
an early leader of the Latter Day Saint movement whose writings became a significant early nineteenth-century exposition of the Latter Day Saint faith. Named in 1835 as one of the first members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Pratt was part of the Quorum's successful mission to Great Britain from 1839 to 1841. Pratt has been called "the Apostle Paul of...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Artists

Johann Daniel Preissler

borndied
16661737
a notable member of a German artistic family, originating in Bohemia. Most notable for his portraits, nudes and history paintings, he also produced drawings and frescoes. He was also known beyond Nuremberg for his "Die durch Theorie erfundene Practic,' a sequence of works on art-theory – the individual works were translated into several other languages and...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Military

Petar Preradovic

borndied
1818, Mar 191872, Aug 18
a Croatian poet, writer, and military general in the Austro-Hungarian Army. He was a part of the Illyrian movement which influenced much of his politics and work. Preradovi? enrolled at the Austrian military academy at Wiener Neustadt where he converted to Catholicism and went on to excel as one of the school's best students. At the academy, he began writing...
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Links (1)


France Preseren

aka: Prešeren
borndied
1800, Dec 2/31849, Feb 8
9th-century Romantic Slovene poet, best known as the poet who has inspired virtually all later Slovene literature and has been generally acknowledged as the greatest Slovene classical author. He wrote some high quality epic poetry, for example the first Slovene ballad and the first Slovene epic. After death, he became the leading name of the Slovene literary...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyEducators

John Preston

bornactivedied
1587, Oct1611-16271628, Jul 20
an Anglican cleric and master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. About 1611, the year in which he commenced M.A., he heard a sermon at St. Mary's from John Cotton, then fellow of Emmanuel, which opened to him a new career. Preston had now taken orders, and become dean and catechist of Queens'. He began a course of sermons which were to form a body of divinity.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Thomas Preston

aka: Roger Widdrington
borndied
15631640, Apr 3
an English Benedictine monk, one of the leaders of the mission to re-establish the Benedictine Order in England after the closure of monasteries during the 16th century. He is also remembered for his writings upholding the cause of James I of England in the allegiance oath controversy.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Rhys Prichard

borndied
15791644
a Welsh clergyman and poet. He was vicar of Llandovery in the west of Wales and held various posts at St David's Cathedral. He was known as "Yr Hen Ficer" ("the Old Vicar") Prichard, who was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, composed many poems on religious themes. His greatest fame lies with his influential poem Cannwyll y Cymry (usually translated as The ...
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Links (1)


Josiah Priest

borndied
17881861
a popular American nonfiction writer of the early 19th century. His books and pamphlets, which presented both standard and speculative history and archaeology sold in the thousands. Although Priest appears to have been poorly educated, he attempted to portray himself as an authority in his books. Priest is often identified as one of the creators of pseudosci...
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Cross-listed in Educators

Joseph Priestley

borndied
1733, Mar 131804, Feb 6
an 18th-century English theologian, dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and Liberal political theorist who published over 150 works. He is usually credited with the discovery of oxygen, having isolated it in its gaseous state, although more
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Cross-listed in Legal

Daniel de Priezac

aka: Priézac
borndied
15901662, May
a French writer and jurist. Priézac was born in Limousin. Graduating as doctor of law in Bordeaux in 1614, he was professor of jurisprudence and conseiller d'État. He was elected to the Académie française in 1639 as a founder member. He wrote the Défence des droits et prérogatives des roys de France, contre Alexandre-Patrice Armacan, théologien (Defen...
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Matthew Prior

borndied
1664, Jul 211721, Sep 18
an English poet and diplomat. He is also known as a contributor to The Examiner. When the Queen died and the Whigs regained power, he was impeached by Robert Walpole and kept in close custody for two years (1715–1717). In 1709, he had already published a col...
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John Prise

aka: Prys, Price
borndied
1502 ca1555
a Welsh public notary, who acted as a royal agent and visitor of the monasteries. He was also a scholar, associated with the first Welsh printed publication Yn y lhyvyr hwnn. He was a Member (MP) of the Parliament of England for Breconshire in 1547; Hereford October 1553; Ludlow April 1553; and Ludgershall November 1554. He took part in public affairs, for e...
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Adelaide Anne Procter

borndied
1825, Oct 301864, Feb 2
an English poet and philanthropist. She worked prominently on behalf of unemployed women and the homeless, and was actively involved with feminist groups and journals. Procter never married, and some of her poetry has prompted speculation that she was a lesbian. She became unhealthy, possibly due to her charity work, and died of tuberculosis at the age of 38...
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Bryan Procter

aka: Barry Cornwall
bornactivedied
1787, Nov 211815-18321874, Oct 5
an English poet. Most of his verse was composed between 1815, when he began to contribute to the Literary Gazette, and 1823, or at latest 1832. His daughter, Adelaide Anne, was also a poet. He wrote and published many volumes of poetry.An autobiographica...
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Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

borndied
1809, Jan 151865, Jan 19
a French politician and the founder of mutualist philosophy. He was the first person to declare himself an anarchist and is widely regarded as one of the ideology's most influential theorists. Proudhon is even considered by many to be the "father of anarchism". He became a member of the French Parliament after the revolution of 1848, whereafter he referred t...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Pacifique de Provins

borndied
15881648
a French Capuchin Father of the 17th century. He established a French mission in Isfahan in 1627 with the agreement of Cardinal Richelieu and Pere Joseph, and the benevolence of Shah Abbas I of Persia. Pacifique de Provins relied on the help of an Armenian named Kh...
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Cross-listed in Legal

William Prynne

bornactivedied
16001627-16691669, Oct 24
an English lawyer, author, polemicist, and political figure. He was a prominent Puritan opponent of the church policy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. Although his views on church polity were presbyterian, he became known in the 1640s as an Erastian, arguing for overall state control of religious matters. A prolific writer, he published over 20...
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Cross-listed in Military

Tomos Prys

borndied
1564 ca1634
a Welsh soldier, sailor and poet. He followed a seafaring life for many years, joining expeditions under both Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake. Many detail...
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Samuel Przypkowski

borndied
15921670, Apr 19
a Polish Socinian theologian, a leading figure in the Polish Brethren and an advocate of religious toleration. In Dissertatio de pace et concordia ecclesiae, published in 1628 in Amsterdam, he called for mutual tolerance by Christians. He was also a poet in Latin and Polish.
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George Psalmanazar

borndied
1679 ca1763, May 3
a Frenchman who claimed to be the first native of Formosa (today Taiwan) to visit Europe. For some years he convinced many in Britain, but was later revealed to be an impostor. He subsequently became a theological essayist and a friend and acquaintance of Samuel Jo...
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Pu Songling

borndied
1640, Jun 51715, Feb 25
a Qing Dynasty Chinese writer, best known as the author of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. Pu was born into a poor merchant family from Zichuan, in Zibo, Shandong. At the age of 18, he received the Xiucai degree in the civil service examination; it was not until he was 71 that he was awarded the Gongsheng degree for his achievement in literature rathe...
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Cross-listed in InventorsLegal

James Puckle

borndied
16671724
an English inventor, lawyer and writer from London chiefly remembered for his invention of the Defence Gun, better known as the Puckle gun, a multi-shot gun mounted on a stand capable of (depending on which version) firing up to nine rounds per minute. The Puckle gun is one of the first weapons referred to as a machine gun (though its operation does not matc...
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Luis de la Puente

borndied
1554, Nov 111624, Feb 16
a Spanish Jesuit theologian and ascetic writer. A few years after his death, the Sacred Congregation of Rites admitted the cause of his beatification and canonization. Puente was born in Valladolid. Having entered the Society of Jesus, he studied under Francisco Suarez, and professed philosophy at Salamanca. He was forced by bad health to retire from duties,...
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Samuel von Pufendorf

aka: Samuel Pufendorf
borndied
1632, Jan 81694, Oct 13
a German jurist, political philosopher, economist, statesman, and historian. His name was just Samuel Pufendorf until he was ennobled in 1684; he was made a Freiherr (baron) a few months before his death at age 62 in 1694. Among his achievements are his commentaries and revisions of the natural law theories of more
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Jean Puget de la Serre

borndied
1594, Nov 151665, Jul
a French author and dramatist. Puget de la Serre was born in Toulouse. He was the author of more than a hundred works. He further authored several ballets which were performed in Brussels where he was part of the court of the exiled French Queen Mother, Marie de Medicis, between 1628 and 1635. He also wrote a number of plays.
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Samuel Purchas [1]

borndied
1577 ca1626
an English cleric, published several volumes of reports by travelers to foreign countries. In 1613 he published Purchas His Pilgrimage: or Relations of the World and the Religions observed in all Ages and Places discovered, from the Creation unto this Present. In this work, intended as an overview of the diversity of God's creation from an Anglican world-vie...
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Samuel Purchas [2]

borndied
unknown1658 ca
author of A Theatre of Political Flying-Insects.


Alexander Pushkin

aka: Aleksandr
bornactivedied
1799, Jun 61814-18371837, Feb 10
a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin published his first poem at the age of fifteen, and was widely recognized by the literary establishment by the time of his graduation from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. While under the stric...
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Vasily Pushkin

borndied
1766, Apr 271830, Aug 20
a minor Russian poet best known as an uncle of the much more famous Alexander Pushkin. Pushkin was a neoclassical poet and was indifferent to the then-popular romantic movement. In his poem "Captain Khrabrov", Pushkin mocked romanticism. He was a follower o...
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Cross-listed in Military

Gwilym Puw

aka: William Pugh
borndied
1618 ca1689 ca
a Welsh Catholic poet and Royalist officer and a member of a prominent Recusant family from the Creuddyn in north Wales. He was a prolific author of Welsh language poems, mainly in defence of the Catholic faith. He also translated Catholic liturgical works from the Latin to his native Welsh. In 1648 he composed a Welsh poem in which loyalty to the king is co...
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Henry James Pye

borndied
1744, Feb 101813, Aug 11
an English poet. Pye was Poet Laureate from 1790 until his death. He was the first poet laureate to receive a fixed salary of £27 instead of the historic tierce of Canary wine (though it was still a fairly nominal payment; then as now the Poet Laureate had to look to extra sales generated by the prestige of the office to make significant money from the Laur...
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