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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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Etta Palm d'Aelders

aka: Aelders
borndied
1743, Apr1799, Mar 28
a Dutch feminist outspoken during the French Revolution. She gave the address Discourse on the Injustice of the Laws in Favour of Men, at the Expense of Women to the French National Convention on 30 December 1790. In 1768 she traveled with Jan Munniks, a young attorney, brother of the celebrated professor of botany Wynoldus Munniks, who had been appoi...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Charles Constance Cesar Joseph Matthieu d'Agoult

aka: Charles Constance César Joseph Matthieu
borndied
17471824
a French Roman Catholic bishop, afterwards a political writer. He studied at the Seminary of St. Sulpice at Paris, and became Bishop of Pamiers in 1787. During the French Revolution he emigrated, but returned to France in 1801, after having surrendered his bishopric.
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Eleonora Charlotta d'Albedyhll

borndied
1770, Mar 271835, Jun 4
a Swedish countess, poet and salon holder. She hosted a literary salon in Uppsala 1812-1835 and has been described as the center of the salon in Uppsala during the Romantic era. She is known as the patron of Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom, who greatly admired her, and as one of the earliest supporters of the Fosforisterna, a group of romantic poets in Uppsala.
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Jean Poldo d'Albenas

borndied
15121563
King’s Counsel in Nîmes (France), born in this city in 1512, died in 1563, contributed to the spread of Calvinism in his hometown. He has published in French, among other works, a Discours historial de l’antique et illustre cité de Nismes (1557), that appeared difficult to read to his contemporaries, but full of useful research for historians. H...
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Cross-listed in Scientists

Jean le Rond d'Alembert

borndied
1717, Nov 161783, Oct 29
a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. Until 1759 he was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie. D'Alembert's formula for obtaining solutions to the wave equation is named after him. The wave equat...
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Catherine d'Amboise

borndied
14751550
a prose writer and poet of the French Renaissance. She wrote both verse and novels, including Book of the Prudent and Imprudent [Livre des Prudents et Imprudents] (1509) and Fainting Lady’s Complaint against Fortune [La complainte de la dame pasemée contre Fortune] (1525), as well as royal song [chant royal], which is the only extant...
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Cross-listed in Legal

Francois d'Amboise

aka: François, marquis de Sainte-Aulaire
borndied
15501619
a French jurist and writer. He was counseller to the Parlement of Brittany and advocate general to the Grand Conseil. François d'Amboise wrote a comedy in verse entitled the Néapolitaines (1584) and several works of poetry, including an elegy on the death of more
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Robert Arnauld d'Andilly

borndied
1589, May 281674, Sep 27
a French conseiller d’État, specialising in financial questions, in the court of Marie de' Medici. By the elegance of his language, he was among the major poets, writers and translators of 17th century French classicism. A fervent Catholic, he played an important role in the history of Jansenism and was one of the Solitaires of Port-Royal-des-Champs. He w...
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Sophie d'Arbouville

aka: Countess d'Arbouville
borndied
1810, Oct 291850, Mar 22
a French writer. Not very much information is available about her life. She wrote poems to be printed in a very small quantity, mainly for her family and inner circle. Later, to contribute to a charitable work, she agreed to print more of her poems. These were published in "La Revue des Deux Mondes" and then grouped by Amyot publisher in 1855 under the name...
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Marco D'Arienzo

borndied
1811, Apr 241877, Apr 24
an Italian opera librettist. D'Arienzo was a professional state official and, at the same time, a writer and librettist. From 1834 to 1837 he worked as a journalist for the Neapolitan newspaper L'Omnibus and was also author of Neapolitan songs, many of which were set to music by Saverio Mercadante. His comic librettos have been described as "witty and well p...
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Agrippa d'Aubigne

aka: d'Aubigné
borndied
1552, Feb 81630, Apr 29
a French poet, soldier, propagandist and chronicler. His epic poem Les Tragiques (1616) is widely regarded as his masterpiece. Aubigné studied in Paris, Orléans, Geneva and Lyon before joining the Huguenot cause of Henry of Navarre (Henry IV) as both soldier and c...
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Gustave d'Eichthal

borndied
1804, Mar 31886, Apr 9
a French writer, publicist, and Hellenist. At the age of thirteen he became a convert to Roman Catholicism, and when he left the Lycée Henri IV in 1822, he became a disciple of Auguste Comte. In 1832 d'Eichthal went to Greece, and on his return to Paris in 1836 published "Les Deux Mondes," containing his reflections on the Orient. He now began to advocate t...
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Cross-listed in Legal

Jean D'Espagnet

borndied
15641637 ca
a French Renaissance polymath. He was a lawyer and politician, a mathematician and alchemist, an antiquarian, poet and friend of French literati. Jean D'Espagnet is known to have owned several books that had previously formed part of Montaigne's library, including his copy of De rerum natura, in which his signature overwrites that of Montaigne's on the title...
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Sir Simonds d'Ewes

aka: 1st Baronet
borndied
1602, Dec 181650, Apr 18
an antiquary and politician. Little is known about the details of his life. He was bred for the bar, was a member of the Long Parliament and left notes on its transactions. d'Ewes took the Puritan side in the Civil War. His Journal of all the Parliaments of Elizabeth is of value; he left an Autobiography and Correspondence.
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Baron d'Holbach

aka: Paul-Henri Thiry, Paul Heinrich Dietrich
borndied
1723, Dec1789, Jan
a French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist and prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born in Edesheim, near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate, but lived and worked mainly in Paris, where he kept a salon. He was well known for his atheism and for his voluminous writings against religion, the most famous of them being The System of Natur...
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Louis-Pierre d'Hozier

borndied
16851767, Sep 25
son of Louis Roger d'Hozier, succeeded his uncle Charles as juge d'armes. He published the Armorial général, ou registre de la noblesse de France (10 vols, 1738 – 1768), which must not be confounded with the publication written by his uncle, inasmuch as it related solely to noble families and was not an official collection. Complete copies of this work, ...
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Victor d'Hupay

borndied
17461818
a French writer and philosopher. In 1746 Victor d'Hupay was born into an aristocratic family in the village of La Tour-d'Aigues in the Luberon, Provence.While still young he wrote texts on agriculture and economics, expressing his wish to share his land with his neighbours, thus transforming the ideals of the Enlightenment philosophers into practice. His fir...
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Isaac D'Israeli

borndied
1766, May 111848, Jan 19
a British writer, scholar and man of letters. He is best known for his essays, his associations with other men of letters, and as the father of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. He penned a handful of English adaptations of traditional tales from the Middle East, wrote a few historical biographies, and published a number of poems. His most popular wo...
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Anne Marie Louise d'Orleans

aka: d'Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier, La Grande Mademoiselle
borndied
1627, May 291693, Apr 5
the eldest daughter of Gaston d'Orléans, and his first wife Marie de Bourbon, Duchess of Montpensier. One of the greatest heiresses in history, she died unmarried and childless, leaving her vast fortune to her cousin, Philippe of France. She is best remembered for her role in the Fronde, her role in bringing the famous composer Lully to the king's court, an...
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Cross-listed in ComposersPerformers

Mathilda d'Orozco

aka: Mathilda Montgomery-Cederhjelm
borndied
17961863
a Swedish (originally Spanish-Italian) noble and salonist, composer, poet, writer, singer, amateur actress and harpsichordist. In Sweden, she is perhaps most known under the name Mathilda Montgomery-Cederhjelm.
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Thomas D'Oyly

bornactivedied
unknown1580sunknown
an English antiquary. He became a member of the Society of Antiquaries. Two of his contributions to the society are preserved in Thomas Hearne's Collection of Curious Discourses (ed. 1771, i. 175–6, 183–4), from transcripts made by Dr. Thomas Smith from the Cotton manuscripts. The subject of one is Of the Antiquity of Arms, the other (written in French) ...
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Honore d'Urfe

aka: Honoré d'Urfé, marquis de Valromey, comte de Châteauneuf
borndied
1568, Feb 111625, Jun 1
a French novelist and miscellaneous writer. It was in Savoy that he conceived the plan of his novel L'Astrée, the scene of which is laid on the banks of the Lignon in his native province of Forez. It is a leisurely romance in which the loves of Celadon and Astrée are told at immense length with many digressions. The first part of L'Astrée appeared in 1607...
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Thomas d'Urfey

aka: Tom Durfey
bornactivedied
16531676-17201723, Feb 26
an English writer and wit. He composed plays, songs, and poetry, in addition to writing jokes. He was an important innovator and contributor in the evolution of the Ballad opera. D'Urfey was born in Devonshire and began his professional life as a scrivener, but quickly turned to the theatre. In personality, he was considered so affable and amusing that he co...
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Luigi Da Porto

borndied
14851529, May 10
an Italian writer and storiographer, better known as the author of the novel Novella novamente ritrovata with the story of Romeo and Juliet, later reprised by William Shakespeare for his famous drama. Da Porto wrote the novel in his villa in Montorso Vicen...
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Hezekiah da Silva

aka: Hezekiah Silva
borndied
16591698
a Jewish author born in Livorno, Grand Duchy of Tuscany. He was the son-in-law of the dayan Mordechai Rafael Malachi. Around the year 1679, at age 20, Da Silva left his native city for Jerusalem in then-Ottoman Syria (Damascus Eyalet), where he attended the yeshivah of Rabbi Moses Galante for ten years. In 1689, Galante died and Da Silva succeeded him as Ros...
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Cross-listed in Educators

Ludvig Kristensen Daa

borndied
1809, Aug 191877, Jun 12
a Norwegian historian, ethnologist, auditor, editor of magazines and newspapers, educator and politician. In 1840–1841 he ran afoul with Henrik Wergeland, who wrote the farces Engelsk Salt and Vinægers Fjeldeventyr (both 1841) about Daa. Daa replied with anonymous attacks in Granskeren, whereas Wergeland was convicted of libel. In 1842 Wergeland released ...
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Robert Daborne

borndied
15801628, Mar 23
an English dramatist of the Jacobean era. He worked on at least five plays for Henslowe in this era, either alone or with collaborators who included Cyril Tourneur, John Fletcher, Nathan Field, and Philip Massinger. None of these plays, with titles like Machiave...
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Fredrik August Dahlgren

borndied
1816, Sep 201895, Feb 16
a Swedish writer, playwright and songwriter. Dahlgren is best remembered for writing two Swedish folk songs. He and Anders Fryxell wrote the lyrics to Ack Värmeland, du sköna (O Värmland, you lovely). He was the sole author of Jänta å ja' (the girl and I). Dahlgren also wrote the musical drama "Värmlänningarna" (The People of Värmland), a popular wor...
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Gunno Dahlstierna

borndied
1661, Sep 71709, Sep 7
a Swedish poet. Dahlstierna's patriotism was touching in its pathos and intensity, and during his long periods of professional exile he comforted himself by the composition of songs to his beloved Sweden. His genius was most irregular, but at his best he easily surpasses all the Swedish poets of his time. His best-known original work is Kungaskald (Stettin, ...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Peter Dajnko

borndied
1787, Apr 231873, Feb 22
a Slovene priest, author, and linguist, known primarily as the inventor of the Dajnko alphabet (Slovene: dajn?ica), an innovative proposal for the Slovene alphabet. Dajnko was also a proficient beekeeper and wrote the first book about beekeeping in the Slovene language, titled ?elarstvo (meaning "Beekeeping" in English). After finishing high school in Marib...
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George Dalgarno

borndied
1626 ca1687
a Scottish intellectual interested in linguistic problems. Originally from Aberdeen, he later worked as a schoolteacher in Oxford in collaboration with John Wilkins, although the two parted company intellectually in 1659. Dalgarno was the author of Didascalocophus or the Deaf and Dumb man's tutor (1680), which proposed a totally new linguistic system for use...
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Jurij Dalmatin

borndied
1547 ca1589 Aug 31
a Slovene Lutheran minister, writer and translator. He translated the complete Bible into Slovene. Dalmatin was the author of several religious books. However, his most important achievement is the complete translation of the Bible into Slovene, which he allegedly wrote to a large extent at Turjak Castle under the protection of the Carniolan governor, Herbar...
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Cross-listed in Sculptors

Anne Seymour Damer

bornactivedied
1749, Nov 81784-18181828, May 28
an English sculptor and novelist. During the period 1784–1818, Damer exhibited 32 works as an honorary exhibitor at the Royal Academy. Her work, primarily busts in Neoclassical style, developed from early wax sculptures to technically complex ones in works in terracotta, bronze, and marble. Damer was also a writer, with one published novel, Belmour (first ...
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Cross-listed in PiratesExplorers

William Dampier

bornactivedied
1651, Sep1673-17151715, Mar
the first Englishman to explore parts of what is today Australia, and the first person to circumnavigate the world three times. He has also been described as Australia's first natural historian, as well as one of the most important He came from Somerset, England, and fought alongside buccaneers in Central America. Marooned on the Nicobar Islands in the India...
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Cross-listed in Legal

Richard Henry Dana Jr.

borndied
1815, Aug 11882, Jan 6
an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts, a descendant of an eminent colonial family, who gained renown as the author of the American classic, the memoir Two Years Before the Mast. Both as a writer and as a lawyer, he was a champion of the downtrodden, from seamen to fugitive slaves and freedmen.
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Jasper Danckaerts

bornactivedied
1639, May 71670s-1680s1703 ca
the founder of a colony of Labadists along the Bohemia River in Maryland. He was a cooper, and was very experienced in mathematics, history and theology. He is known for his journal, kept while traveling through the territory which had previously been part of the New Netherland. Documenting his journey in 1679-1680, it offers a description of the landscape a...
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Florent Carton Dancourt

borndied
1661, Nov 11725, Dec 7
a French dramatist and actor, was born at Fontainebleau. He belonged to a family of rank, and his parents entrusted his education to Pere de la Rue, a Jesuit, who made earnest efforts to induce him to join the order. But he had no religious vocation and proceeded to study law. His first play, Le Notaire obligeant, produced in 1685, was well received. La Dés...
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Lambert Daneau

borndied
1535 ca1590 ca
a French jurist and Calvinist theologian. He wrote a book on witchcraft, Dialogus de veneficiis (1564). His views on the topic of hunting witches caused trouble for him in Leiden. It was translated, in its 1574 edition, into English by Thomas Twyne as A Dialogue of Witches (1575). His Physica christiana (1576) argued for a Scriptural basis for physics. It wa...
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Samuel Daniel

borndied
15621619, Oct 14
an English poet and historian. His first known work, a translation of Paulus Jovius, to which some original matter is appended, was printed in 1585. His first known volume of verse is dated 1592; it contains the cycle of sonnets addressed to "Delia" and a romance called The Complaint of Rosamond. Twenty-seven of the sonnets had already been printed at the en...
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Lewys Daron

bornactivedied
unknown1495-1530sunknown
a Welsh-language professional poet from the Ll?n area of Gwynedd, Wales. Although not considered to be one of the foremost of the Poets of the Nobility, his work provides a portrait of the gentry society of north-west Wales at the start of the Tudor period. His date of birth is not known and our knowledge of him depends almost entirely on the evidence of hi...
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Cross-listed in ExplorersScientists

Charles Darwin

bornactivedied
1809, Feb 121827-18721882, Apr 19
an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and in a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace introduced h...
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Cross-listed in Physicians

Erasmus Darwin

borndied
1731, Dec 121802, Apr 18
an English physician. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave-trade abolitionist, inventor and poet. His poems included much natural history, including a statement of evolution and the relatedness of all forms of life. He was a member of the Darwin–Wedgwood family, which includes his gra...
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Dinakrushna Das

borndied
16501710
a famous poet of Orissa (in modern India), belonging to the Vaishnava tradition of bhakti movement. He is known for his Oriya poem titled "Rasakallola", which is devoted to Lord Krishna. Among his many literary compositions, "Artatrana Chautisa" is a reputed one. Dinakrushna has about 15 poems to his credit, among which the most famous one is Rasakollola. H...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Guru Ram Das

borndied
15341581
Ram Das became guru and remained so for 7 years.As a Guru, one of his main contributions to Sikhism was organizing the structure of Sikh society. There are 688 Hymns by Guru Ram Das which have various teachings for Sikhs—that are in the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh supreme granth
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Countess Dash

aka: Gabrielle Anne Cisterne de Courtiras, vicomtesse de Saint-Mars
borndied
1804, Aug 21872, Sep 11
a prolific French writer. She was a daughter of M. de Courtiras, and early married the Marquis de Saint-Mars. After the loss of her fortune, she took to writing. On her remarking that she wished to write under an assumed name, that of her favorite dog, “Dash,” was suggested, which she adopted. In many years she produced five to six novels. Her themes are...
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Jean Daurat

borndied
1508, Apr 31588, Nov 1
a French poet, scholar and a member of a group known as The Pléiade. In 1556 he was appointed professor of Greek at the Collège Royal. In 1567, he resigned the post in favour of his nephew, Nicolas Goulu. King Charles IX gave him the title of poeta regius ("the king's poet"). His prolific output was the wonder of his time; he is said to have composed more ...
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Sir William Davenant

borndied
1606, Mar1668, Apr 7
an English poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned both the Caroline and Restoration eras and who was active both before and after the English Civil War and during the Interregnum. In 1645, after the decisive Royalist defeat at the Battle of Naseby, he retired ...
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Selina Davenport

borndied
1779, Jun 271859, Jul 14
an English novelist, briefly married to the miscellanist and biographer Richard Alfred Davenport. Her eleven published novels have been described recently as "effective if stereotyped". Most of her works were published by Minerva Press (later A. K. Newman & Company), known especially for sentimental and Gothic fiction. At least two were translated into Germa...
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Lucretia Maria Davidson

borndied
1808, Sep 271825, Aug 25
an American poet of the early 19th century. When about fourteen years old she was allowed to attend a ball in Plattsburg, but, in the midst of her preparations, was found sitting in a corner writing verses on “What the World Calls Pleasure.” Her mother's friends advised that pen and ink be kept from her, and, hearing of this, she voluntarily gave up her ...
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John Davies of Hereford

borndied
1565 ca1618, Jul
a writing-master and an Anglo-Welsh poet. He is usually known as John Davies of Hereford (after the city where he was born) in order to distinguish him from others of the same name. Davies wrote very copiously on theological and philosophical themes. He also wrote many epigrams on his contemporaries which have some historical interest. John Davies died in Lo...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

John Davies [1]

borndied
1567 ca1644
one of Wales's leading scholars of the late Renaissance. He wrote a Welsh grammar and dictionary. He was also a translator and editor and an ordained minister of the Church of England. He is believed to have been the main editor and reviser of the 1620 edition of the Welsh translation of the Bible and the 1621 edition of the Welsh translation of the Book of ...
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Cross-listed in Legal

Sir John Davies [2]

borndied
1569, Apr1626, Dec 8
an English poet, lawyer, and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1597 and 1621. He became Attorney General for Ireland and formulated many of the legal principles that underpinned the British Empire. Davies wrote poetry in numerous forms, but is best known for his epigrammes and sonnets. In 1599 he published Nosce Teipsum (Kno...
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Myles Davies

borndied
16621715 ca
a Welsh author. He published the Athenae Britannicae in 1716. Davies was a native of Whiteford, near Holywell in Flintshire, Wales. His parents George and Elizabeth Davies lived in Tre'r Abbot.[2] Isaac D'Israeli said his biography was quite unknown. He was educated at the English Jesuit College in Rome, and was made a Roman Catholic priest on 17 Apri...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Richard Davies

borndied
1505 ca1581, Nov 7
a Welsh bishop and scholar. Famous for his oratory abilities, he was renowned for having an embarrassing speech impediment which earned him the affectionate nickname of Biffe.The nickname Biffe derived from the ancient Celtic word for fool from which we now take the word buffoon. Another of the bishops friends was Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex. Assisti...
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James Davis

borndied
1575 ca1623, Feb 16
an English ship captain and author. He was part of the expedition of the Virginia Company of Plymouth which established the short-lived Popham Colony, also called "Northern Virginia." Records suggest that Captain Davis and Virginia made at least one other Atlantic crossing, from England to the more successful Jamestown Settlement, a project of the Virginia C...
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Walter Davison

borndied
1581, Dec 171608?
an English poet. He was the author of eighteen of the poems in the first of edition of the Poetical Rhapsody, 1602, the poetical collection compiled by his brother Francis. At the time these poems were composed he was under eighteen years of age. "Seventeen of these comprise a competent but unmemorable sequence of amatory poems; the last is a translation fro...
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Cross-listed in InventorsScientists

Sir Humphry Davy

bornactivedied
1778, Dec 171795-18291829, May 29
a Cornish chemist and inventor, who is best remembered today for his discoveries of several alkali and alkaline earth metals, as well as contributions to the discoveries of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. He also studied the forces involved in these separations, inventing the new field of electrochemistry. In 1799 Davy experimented with nitrous ...
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Cross-listed in Military

Denis Davydov

borndied
1784, Jul 271839, May 4
a Russian soldier-poet of the Napoleonic Wars who invented a specific genre -- hussar poetry noted for its hedonism and bravado – and spectacularly designed his own life to illustrate such poetry. Davydov's poems read like a diary of the hussar and bon-vivant that he was. Admired by Belinsky for their organic quality and Russianness, they address such them...
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Manasseh Dawes

borndied
unknown1829, Apr 2
an English barrister and miscellaneous writer. Dawes was a barrister of the Inner Temple. He left the bar and lived quietly at Clifford's Inn for the last thirty-six years of his life. Dawes took the Whig side on the American War of Independence, and the law of libel; but defended William Blackstone against more
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Cross-listed in Legal

Stefan Marko Daxner

aka: Štefan
borndied
1822, Dec 221891, Apr 11
an ethnic Slovak lower nobleman, politician, lawyer, and poet in the Kingdom of Hungary. He was a member of what became known as the Ludovít Štúr generation. He was a co-author of the Slovak Requests of Liptovský Mikuláš (1848), Requests of the Slovak Nation (1848), Memorandum of the Slovak Nation in 1861, and was one of the founders of the Matica slov...
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John Day

borndied
15741638?
an English dramatist of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. He was born at Cawston, Norfolk, and educated at Ely. He became a sizar of Caius College, Cambridge, in 1592, but was expelled in the next year for stealing a book. He became one of Philip Henslowe's playwrights, collaborating with Henry Chettle, William Haughton, Thomas Dekker, Richard Hathwaye a...
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Thomas Day

borndied
1748, Jun 221789, Sep 28
a British author and abolitionist. He first attended a school in Stoke Newington, Middlesex, but after a bout of smallpox he was moved to Charterhouse School. He subsequently attended Corpus Christi College, Oxford where he became a master debater. He was well known for the children's book The History of Sandford and Merton (1783–1789) which emphasized Rou...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

William Day

bornactivedied
1605 ca1624-16661684
an English cleric and biblical commentator. He received his education at Eton College. He was elected in 1624 to King's College, Cambridge, of which he became a Fellow (B.A. 1628-9, M.A. 1632). In 1635 he was incorporated M.A. at Oxford, and in 1637 he was presented by Eton College to the vicarage of Mapledurham, Oxfordshire. He complied with all the changes...
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Cyrano de Bergerac

borndied
1619, Mar 61655, Jul 28
a French novelist, playwright, epistolarian and duelist. A bold and innovative author, his work was part of the libertine literature of the first half of the seventeenth century. Today he is best known as the inspiration for Edmond Rostand's most noted drama Cyrano de Bergerac which, although it includes elements of his life, also contains invention and myth...
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Cross-listed in Legal

Cornelis de Bie

borndied
1627, Feb 101715 ca
a Flemish rederijker, poet, jurist and minor politician from Lier. He is the author of about 64 works, mostly comedies. He is known internationally today for his biographical sketches of Flemish and Dutch painters in his Het Gulden Cabinet der Edel Vry Schilderconst (the Golden Cabinet of the Honourable Free Art of Painting), first printed in 1662.
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Cross-listed in Cartographers

John William Gerard de Brahm

borndied
17181799 ca
a German cartographer, engineer and mystic. In 1754 he was appointed by the British as surveyor general for Georgia Colony. In August 1756 he traveled to the Cherokee Overhill country on the banks of the Little Tennessee River as the engineer constructing Fort Loudoun. He is said to have been the most prolific mapmaker in the Southern Colonies in the late ei...
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Cross-listed in Military

Louis-Leon de Brancas

aka: Louis-Léon, 3rd duc de Lauraguais, 6th duc de Villars
borndied
1733, Jul 31824, Oct 9
a French general and author, and a member of the French Academy of Sciences. He was the son of Louis de Brancas-Villars and Adelaide-Genevieve d'O, Marquise de Franconville. He married Elisabeth-Pauline de Gand, Princess d'Isenghien, in 1755. He was born at Versailles, Yvelines, Île-de-France, and died in Paris.
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Cross-listed in ArtistsArchitects

Salomon de Bray

borndied
15971664
a Dutch Golden Age architect and painter. He painted history paintings, portraits and landscapes. As a Catholic he probably also made altar pieces for the Haarlem underground Catholic churches known as mission stations, or staties. He was a poet and member of the Chamber of rhetoric called "De Wijngaertranken".
Links (2)


Charles de Brosses

aka: comte de Tournay, baron de Montfalcon, seigneur de Vezins et de Prevessin
borndied
1709, Feb 71777, May 7
a French writer of the 18th century. He was president of the parliament of his hometown Dijon from 1741, a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres from 1746, and a member of the Académie des Sciences, Arts et Belles-Lettres de Dijon from 1761. Because he opposed the absolute power of the king, he was exiled twice, in 1744 and 1771. He wro...
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Links (1)


Philippe-Alexandre Le Brun de Charmettes

borndied
17851870
a French historian, poet, translator and official. De Charmettes was born in Bordeaux (France). He was appointed to the French Conseil d'État in 1810 and became a préfet (prefect) in the French department of Haute-Saône in 1830. A contributor to the literary magazine l’Abeille littéraire, created by more
Links (1)


Constantin Francois de Chassebœuf

aka: Constantin François, comte de Volney
borndied
1757, Feb 31820, Apr 25
a French philosopher, abolitionist, historian, orientalist, and politician. He was at first surnamed Boisgirais after his father's estate, but afterwards assumed the name of Volney (which he had created as a contraction of Voltaire and Ferney). He embarked on his journey to the East in late 1782 and reached Ottoman Egypt, where he spent nearly seven months. ...
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Cross-listed in NavalCartographers

Jean de Clamorgan

aka: Lord of Saane
borndied
1480unknown
born in the diocese of Coutances, a cartographer, navigator and military commander, considered to be one of the best French admirals of the Marine Royale. Having long served in the French Navy, Francis I of France made him captain of the Ponant being the ...
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Links (1)


François de Cauvigny de Colomby

aka: sieur de Colomby
borndied
1588 ca1648
a French poet, translator, conseiller du roi and "orateur du roi pour les discours d'État". Very little information is available concerning the details of his life. De Colomby was a relation of Malherbe. He wrote many books on a variety of topics.
Links (1)


Marie De Cotteblanche

borndied
1520 ca1582 ca
a French noblewoman known for her skill in languages and translation of works from Spanish to French. Her only known surviving work is her 1566 translation of a best-selling text, Coloquios y Diálogos (1547) by the Spanish encyclopaedist Pedro Mexía. The French title was Trois dialogues de M. Pierre Messie, touchant la nature du soleil, de la terre et de t...
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Links (1)


Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon

aka: de Crébillon, Crébillon fils
borndied
1707, Feb 131777, Apr 12
a French novelist. Born in Paris, he was the son of a famous tragedian, Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon. He received a Jesuit education at the elite Lycée Louis-le-Grand. Early on he composed various light works, including plays for the Italian Theatre in Paris, and published a short tale called Le Sylphe in 1730.
Links (1)


Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon

aka: de Crébillon
borndied
1674, Jan 131762, Jun 17
a French poet and tragedian. Having been educated at the Jesuit school in the town, and afterwards at the Collège Mazarin. He became an advocate, and was placed in the office of a lawyer named Prieur at Paris. With the encouragement of his master, son of an old friend of Scarron's, he produced a Mort des enfants de Brutus, which was never produced on the st...
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Timeline (2)Links (1)


Marquise de Crequy

aka: de Créquy, marquise de Créquy de Heymont de Canaples d'Ambrières
borndied
17041803
a French woman of letters, by marriage a member of the Créquy family, which counted several distinguished public servants and prelates, particularly in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.The Souvenirs de la Marquise de Créquy is attributed to her by university librarians. In her Souvenirs, which consists mainly of accurate noble genealogies and court gossip...
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Pierre de L'Estoile

borndied
15461611, Oct 8
a Parisian diarist and collector. Born in Paris into a middle-class background, Pierre de l'Estoile was tutored by Mathieu Béroalde. He knew Agrippa d'Aubigné. He became a law student at Bourges (1565). He became a notary, and royal secretary. He spent time in prison in 1589, being taken for one of the supporters of the 'Politiques'. The Registres Journaux...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Architects

Philibert de l'Orme

aka: De l'Orme, de L'Orme, or Delorme
bornactivedied
1514 ca1540-15671570, Jan 8
a French architect, one of the great masters of the French Renaissance; also wrote two books on architecture. Much of his work has disappeared, but his fame remains. An ardent humanist and student of the antique, he yet vindicated resolutely the French tradition in opposition to Italian tendencies; he was a man of independent mind and a vigorous originality....
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Links (1)


Jean-Benjamin Francois de la Borde

aka: François
borndied
1734, Sep 51794, Jul 22
a French librettist, composer and historian. He was born in Paris and guillotined in Paris. Not much information is available about his life. Jean-Philippe Rameau taught him composition, and Antoine Dauvergne taught him the violin. He was a prolific composer of opéras-comiques and songs. He is now remembered for his four-volume Essai sur la musique ancienne...
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Links (1)


Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

aka: Sor Juana Inés
borndied
1651, Nov 121695, Apr 17
a self-taught scholar and poet of the Baroque school, and Hieronymite nun of New Spain, known in her lifetime as "The Tenth Muse." Although she lived in a colonial era when Mexico was part of the Spanish Empire, she is considered today both a Mexican writer and a contributor to the Spanish Golden Age. She stands at the beginning of the history of Mexican lit...
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Jacques de la Faye

bornactivedied
unknown1690s-1700sunknown
a 17th-18th century French writer whose Defensio Religionis (&Defense of Religion') a 251-page critique of the pantheism of John Toland, was published at Utrecht in 1709. There is very little information available about the details of his life. De la Faye's was the first recorded use of the word, "pantheism".
Links (1)


Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force

borndied
16541724
a French novelist and poet. Her best-known work was her 1698 fairy tale Persinette which was adapted by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 as the story Rapunzel. Her first novels were in the popular vein of "histoires secrètes", short novels recounting the "secret history" of a famous person and linking the action generally to an amorous intrigue.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Performers

Ebba Maria De la Gardie

borndied
16571697
a Swedish poet and singer. She was a favorite of the Swedish Queen, Ulrika Eleonora of Denmark. She was active as a poet at the royal court and was given much attention by her contemporaries. She participated at the amateur theatre of the royal court encouraged by the queen, Ulrika Eleonora of Denmark. In the winter of 1683-84, a group of female courtiers pe...
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Links (1)


Johanna Eleonora De la Gardie

borndied
16611708
a Swedish writer, poet, lady-in-waiting and noblewoman. She received a cultivated education, along with her sister Ebba Maria De la Gardie. She wrote the French poem Portrait d’Ismène for Ulrika Eleonora, and the German–language psalm Weich, Falsche Welt. She encouraged poets and writers; she is remembered as benefactor and teacher of the ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Military

Jose Enrique de la Pena

aka: José Enrique de la Peña
borndied
18071840
a colonel in the Mexican Army. Under General Antonio López de Santa Anna, de la Peña participated in the Battle of the Alamo. In 1955, a book of his memoirs of the battle was published. The memoirs are controversial in that they said that Davy Crockett did not...
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Links (1)Notes (1)


Pierre de Lancre

aka: Pierre de l'Ancre, Lord of De Lancre
borndied
15531631
the French judge of Bordeaux who conducted a massive witch-hunt in Labourd in 1609. In 1582 he was named judge in Bordeaux, and in 1608 King Henry IV commanded him to put an end to the practice of witchcraft in Labourd, in the French part of the Basque Country, whe...
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Links (1)


Manuel de Lardizabal y Uribe

aka: de Lardizábal
borndied
17441820
a Novohispanic penologist who was an academician of the Real Academia Española de la Lengua from 1775 to 1820. The lawyer Acevedo published in 1770 a dissertation against torture, as being in conflict with Nature Rights and public decency within the Social Body. The lawyer politician from Zaragoza, Manuel de Roda y Arrieta, managed to get Charles III and h...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Military

Blaise de Lasseran-Massencome

aka: Lasseran-Massencôme, seigneur de Montluc
borndied
1502 ca1577, Jul 26
a marshal of France. Montluc's reputation was made by his Commentaires de Messire Blaise de Montluc (Bordeaux, 1592), in which he described his fifty years of service (1521–1574). This book, the "soldier's Bible" (or "breviary," according to others), as Henry IV c...
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Links (1)


Jaques De Lavardin

bornactivedied
unknown1570s-1580sunknown
a lord in Plessis-Bourrot, squire and noble of the king of France, known for the translation of two works in French: the Celestine from Fernando de Rojas and of the Historia de vita et rebus gestis Scanderbegi, a chronic of the Kingdom of Gjergj Kastriot Skanderbeg from Marin Barleti. De Lavardin was active during 1575 and 1585. He is the brother of the theo...
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Links (1)


Jeanne Julie Eleonore de Lespinasse

aka: Jeanne Julie Éléonore
borndied
1732, Nov 91776, May 23
She ran a prominent salon in Paris during the Enlightenment. She is best-known today, however, for her letters, first published in 1809, which offer compelling accounts of two tragic love affairs. Following the first publication of Mlle de Lespinasse's Letters in 1809, a spurious additional collection appeared in 1820.
Links (1)


Barthelemy de Lesseps

aka: Barthélemy
borndied
1766, Jan 271834, Apr 6/26
a French diplomat and writer, member of the scientific expedition of Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse (1 August 1785 – January 1788) and uncle of Ferdinand de Lesseps. By age 12 he spoke fluent Russian, German, Spanish and, of course, French. After studying at the Jesuit college of Versailles for five years, he returned to St. Petersburg in 1...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Bertrand de Loque

bornactivedied
unknown1580s1600+
a Protestant minister, said to be the same person as François de Saillans, who was born in Valence between 1540 and 1550. Loque was still alive in 1600. There is very little information available about the details of his life. He was the author of Deux Traitéz: l'un de la guerre, l'autre du duel (Lyon: Iacob Ratoyre, 1589).
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Charles de Lorme

aka: Delorme, d'lorm, De l'Orme
borndied
15841678, Jun 24
a French medical doctor who practiced in several regions across Europe during the 17th century. Charles was the son of Jean Delorme (a professor at Montpellier University), who was the primary doctor to Marie de' Medici. This ultimately opened doors for Charles' medical career soon after he graduated from the University of Montpellier in 1607 at the age of 2...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Pirates

Raveneau de Lussan

bornactivedied
unknown1679-1688unknown
a French buccaneer. In 1679 he embarked for Santo Domingo in search of fortune, but was unsuccessful, and joined the buccaneers under Laurens de Graaf, sailing from Petit-Goâve, 22 November 1684. He soon left de Graaf at the head of a band of his own, and in 1685 pillaged the town of El Realejo. In 1686 his band took part in the capture of Grenada, and, not...
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Links (1)


Michel de Montaigne

bornactivedied
1533, Feb 281546-15921592, Sep 13
one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with serious intellectual insight; his massive volume Essais (translated literally as "Attempts" or "Trials") contains some of the most influential essays ever writte...
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Links (16)


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)


Augustus De Morgan

borndied
1806, Jun 271871, Mar 18
a British mathematician and logician. He formulated De Morgan's laws and introduced the term mathematical induction, making its idea rigorous. De Morgan was a brilliant and witty writer, whether as a controversialist or as a correspondent. De Morgan later in his life became interested in the phenomena of spiritualism. In 1849 he had investigated clairvoyance...
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Links (1)


Francoise Bertaut de Motteville

aka: Françoise
borndied
1621 ca1689
a French memoir writer. Some letters of hers are preserved, especially a curious correspondence with Anne, Duchess of Montpensier "La Grande Mademoiselle" on marriage, but her chief work is her Mémoires, which are in effect a history of Anne of Austria, written briefly till the date of Mme de Motteville's return to court, and then with fullness. They give a...
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Links (1)


Evariste de Parny

aka: Évariste , vicomte de Parny
borndied
1753, Feb 61814, Dec 5
a French poet. Parny became known for his Poésies érotiques (1778) a collection of love poems which brought a breath of fresh air to the formal academic poetry of the 18th century. He is also known for his Chansons madécasses (1787), which he called translations of songs of the island of Madagascar, which are considered the first prose poems in French.
Links (1)


Cornelius de Pauw

aka: Cornelius Franciscus de Pauw, Cornelis de Pauw
borndied
1739, Aug 181799, Jul 5
a Dutch philosopher, geographer and diplomat at the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia. He was a specialist in ethnologic studies as well, publishing a study of American Indians in French in 1768. Daniel Webb, an English scholar and translator, translated portions of de Pauw’s work into English for a public that was hungry for information regarding th...
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Links (1)


Francois de Porcheres d'Arbaud

aka: François de Porchères d'Arbaud
borndied
1590, Dec 201640, May 5
a French poet. François de Porchères d'Arbaud was born on December 20, 1590 in Brignoles in the French department of Var. Hee went to Paris to study poetry under François de Malherbe, who left him half of his library in his will, the other half went to Racan. De Porchères d'Arbaud was the other of many works, of which others have since published in moder...
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Links (1)


Honorat de Porcheres Laugier

aka: de Porchères Laugier
borndied
1572, Jun 81653, Oct 26
a French poet. He is most notable for his sonnet on the beautiful eyes of Gabrielle d'Estrées and for being a founder member of the Académie française. He is sometimes called Honoré de Porchères Laugier. Honorat de Porchères Laugier began in literature with a prose work, The Camp of Place-Royale, which he published in 1612. His amorous poems inserted i...
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Links (1)


Thomas De Quincey

bornactivedied
1785, Aug 151802-18531859, Dec 8
an English essayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821). Many scholars suggest that in publishing this work De Quincey inaugurated the tradition of addiction literature in the West. De Quincey was a weak and sickly child. His youth was spent in solitude, and when his elder brother, William, came home, he wrought havoc in t...
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Links (1)


Marquis de Sade

aka: Donatien Alphonse François
borndied
1740, Jun 21814, Dec 2
a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher and writer, famous for his libertine sexuality. His works include novels, short stories, plays, dialogues and political tracts; in his lifetime some were published under his own name, while others appeared anonymously and Sade denied being their author. De Sade is best known for his erotic works, whi...
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Timeline (3)Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Francis de Sales

borndied
1567, Aug 211622, Dec 28
a Bishop of Geneva and is honored as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. He became noted for his deep faith and his gentle approach to the religious divisions in his land resulting from the Protestant Reformation. He is known also for his writings on the topic of spiritual direction and spiritual formation, particularly the Introduction to the Devout Life ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Legal

Denis de Sallo

aka: Sieur de la Coudraye
borndied
16261669, May 14
a French writer and lawyer from Paris, known as the founder of the first French literary and scientific journal - the Journal des sçavans (later renamed Journal des savants). De Sallo obtained classical education and was admitted to the Paris bar in 1652, although he later devoted himself to scholarly aspects of the law rather than active practice, serving ...
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Links (1)


Garcia de Silva Figueroa

aka: García
borndied
1550, Dec 291624, Jul 22
a Spanish diplomat, and the first Western traveller to correctly identify the ruins of Takht-e Jamshid in Persia as the location of Persepolis, the ancient capital of the Achaemenid Empire and one of the great cities of antiquity. De Silva travelled extensively throughout Persia, visiting the cities of Shiraz, Qom and Isfahan among others. He wrote a full a...
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Links (1)


Charles de Valois

aka: Duke of Angoulême
bornactivedied
1573, Apr 281589-16431650, Sep 24
a French royal bastard, count of Auvergne, duke of Angoulême, and memoirist. Charles de Valois was the illegitimate son of Charles IX and Marie Touchet. In 1604 d'Entragues and he were arrested and condemned to death; at the same time the marchioness was condemned to perpetual imprisonment in a convent. She easily obtained pardon, and the sentence of death ...
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Links (1)


Edward de Vere

aka: 17th Earl of Oxford
borndied
1550, Apr 121604, Jun 24
an English peer and courtier of the Elizabethan era. Oxford was heir to the second oldest earldom in the kingdom, a court favourite for a time, a sought-after patron of the arts, and noted by his contemporaries as a lyric poet and court playwright, but his reckless and volatile temperament precluded him from attaining any courtly or governmental responsibili...
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Links (1)


Theophile de Viau

aka: Théophile
borndied
15901626, Sep 25
a French Baroque poet and dramatist. De Viau's wrote satirical poems, sonnets, odes and elegies. His works include one play, Les Amours tragiques de Pyrame et Thisbé (performed in 1621), the tragic love story of Pyramus and Thisbe which ends in a double suicide. He wrote Fragment d'une histoire comique (English: Fragment of a Comic Novel, 1623), in which he...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Military

Alfred de Vigny

aka: Comte de Vigny
borndied
1797, Mar 271863, Sep 17
a French poet and early leader of French Romanticism. He also produced novels, plays, and translations of Shakespeare. Unlike many of the French Romantics, Vigny was an army officer with conservative and consistently royalist views. Though he was promoted to first lieutenant in 1822 and to captain the following year, the military profession in time of peace ...
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Links (1)


Marie-Catherine de Villedieu

aka: Madame de Villedieu
borndied
16401683, Oct 20
a French writer of plays, novels and short fiction. Madame de Villedieu was prolific in the genre of "nouvelles historiques" and "nouvelles galantes" which began to appear in France in the 1660s. An interest in love, psychological analysis, moral dilemmas and social constraints permeated these relatively short novels. When the action was placed in an histori...
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Links (1)


Muneccimbasi Ahmed Dede

aka: Münejjim Bashi
borndied
unknown1702, Feb 27
an Ottoman courtier, scholar, Sufi poet and historian. His chief work is the Jami? al-Duwal, a world history particularly valuable for the history of the medieval Muslim dynasties of the regions around the southwestern shore of the Caspian Sea (Adharbayjan, Shirvan, Arran, Derbent). In Turkish literature he is referred to also as Ahmed Lütfullah.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in ComposersPerformers

Constantin Christian Dedekind

bornactivedied
1628, Apr 21652-1690s1715
a German poet, dramatist, librettist, composer and bass singer of the Baroque era. His 1657 songbook Aelbianische Musen-Lust was a large collection of musical settings of German strophic poetry, for solo voice. In 1680 the outbreak of plague caused Dedekind to flee Dresden for Meissen. In his last years he composed much less; his late work was almost entirel...
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Links (3)


Cross-listed in Astronomers

John Dee

bornactivedied
1527, Jul 131546-16051609 ca
an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occult philosopher, imperialist, and adviser to Queen Elizabeth I. He devoted much of his life to the study of alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy. One of the most learned men of his age, he had been invited to lecture on the geometry of Euclid at the University of Paris while still in his early twen...
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Links (15)


Daniel Defoe

aka: de Foe
bornactivedied
1660 ca1697-17281731, Apr
an English trader, writer, journalist, pamphleteer, and spy, most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and is among the founders of the English novel. He was a prolific and versatile writer, producing more than five hundred books, p...
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Timeline (4)Links (17)


Thomas Dekker

borndied
1572 ca1632, Aug 25
an English Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer, a versatile and prolific writer, whose career spanned several decades and brought him into contact with many of the period's most famous dramatists. Dekker embarked on a career as a theatre writer in the middle 1590s. His handwriting is found in the manuscript of Sir more
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Astronomers

Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre

bornactivedied
1749, Sep 191788-18221822, Aug 19
a French mathematician and astronomer. He was also director of the Paris Observatory, and author of well-known books on the history of astronomy from ancient times to the 18th century.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Educators

Josefina Deland

borndied
1814, Oct 11890, Mar 8
a Swedish feminist, writer and a teacher in French. She founded Svenska lärarinnors pensionsförening (Society for Retired Female Teachers), where she served as chairperson from its foundation in 1855 to 1859. Deland was a feminist, and became a pioneer as a woman's rights activist in Sweden at a point when no women's movement was organized in Sweden, a par...
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Links (1)


Antoine-Francois Delandine

aka: Antoine-François
borndied
1756, Mar 51820, May 5
a French writer. Delandine was born in Lyon. A lawyer at the Parliament of Dijon and the Parliament of Paris, he made a brief political career during the French Revolution when he was elected to the Estates-General of 1789 as deputy of the Forez. He was imprisoned during the Reign of Terror because of his opposition to the Republicans. He survived and went o...
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Links (1)


Germain Delavigne

borndied
1790, Feb 11868, Nov 3
a French playwright and librettist. A frequent collaborator of Eugène Scribe, Delavigne was involved in the creation of the libretti of two of the earliest grand operas, Daniel Auber's La muette de Portici (1828) and Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le di...
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Links (1)


Charles-Gaspard Delestre-Poirson

borndied
1790, Aug 221859, Nov 19
a French playwright and theatre director. He wrote several comedies, alone (e.g. Le Fat en province ou Le plan de comédie, a 3-act comedy ; Inès et Pédrille ou La cousine supposée, a 3-act comedy ; Spectacle demandé ou Rien qu'en famille, a one-act divertissement "mêlée de couplets" ; Les Anglais supposés ou Lequel est mon gendre ?, at Théâtre de l...
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Links (1)


Francisco Delicado

borndied
1480 ca1535 ca
a Spanish writer and editor of the Renaissance. Little is known about his life. He was born in Cordoba, Spain and, by uncertain reasons, he moved to Rome, where he became vicar and Italianized his surname to Delicado. After the sack of Rome, he went to Venice where he wrote his novel Portrait of Lozana: The Lusty Andalusian Woman (El retrato de la Loçana An...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Scientists

Giambattista della Porta

aka: Giovanni Battista Della Porta
borndied
15351615, Feb 4
an Italian scholar, polymath and playwright who lived in Naples at the time of the Renaissance, Scientific Revolution and Reformation. He spent the majority of his life on scientific endeavors. He benefited from an informal education of tutors and visits from renowned scholars. His most famous work, first published in 1558, is entitled Magia Naturalis ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Composers

Pietro Della Valle

borndied
1586, Apr 21652, Apr 21
an Italian composer, musicologist, and author who travelled throughout Asia during the Renaissance period. His travels took him to the Holy Land, the Middle East, Northern Africa, and as far as India. His early life was spent in the pursuit of literature and arms. He was a cultivated man, who knew Latin, Greek, classical mythology, and the Bible. He also bec...
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Links (1)


Thomas Deloney

borndied
1543 ca1600, Apr
an English novelist and ballads. He began his working life as a silk-weaver perhaps in Norwich. He then moved to London. An entry in the parish register of St Giles-without-Cripplegate from 16 October 1586, records the baptism of his son Richard. In the course of the next ten years he is known to have written about fifty ballads, one-sheet stories and news s...
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Links (1)


Baron Anton Delvig

borndied
1798, Aug 61831, Jan 14
a Russian poet and journalist who studied in the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum together with Alexander Pushkin, and Wilhelm Küchelbecker with whom he became close friends. Küchelbecker dedicated a poem ('O, Delvig') to him. Delvig commissioned a portrait of Pushki...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Governance

Jean-Nicolas Demeunier

aka: Démeunier, Desmeuniers
bornactivedied
1751, Mar 151789-18081814, Feb 2
a French author and politician. It was as a member of the Constitutional Committee that Démeunier had the biggest impact. He presented to the Assembly on behalf of the Committee a report (7 March 1791) on the need for the ministerial responsibility, and later declared support (26 August 1791) for the eligibility of the members of the royal family to hold el...
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Links (2)Notes (1)


Charles-Albert Demoustier

borndied
1760, Mar 131801, Mar 2
a French writer. He falsely claimed to be a descendant of La Fontaine by his mother and Jean Racine by his father. Demoustier was born in Villers-Cotterêts. He worked as a lawyer, but later decided to become a writer. In 1786, he published the first part of Lettr...
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Links (1)


Sir John Denham

borndied
1614/151669, Mar 19
an Anglo-Irish poet and courtier. He served as Surveyor of the King's Works and is buried in Westminster Abbey. Denham began his literary career with a tragedy, The Sophy (1641), but his poem, Cooper's Hill (1642), is the work by which he is remembered. It is the first example in English of a poem devoted to local description, of the Thames Valley scenery ro...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Thomas Denman

borndied
1733, Jun 271815, Nov 26
an English physician. He was the second son of John Denman, an apothecary born at Bakewell, Derbyshire. After a career in naval medicine he made a considerable amount of money in midwifery. The phenomenon of Denman's spontaneous evolution, by which a spontaneous impaction of the shoulder of a foetus resolves a difficult transverse delivery during childbirth,...
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Links (1)


Joseph Dennie

borndied
1768, Aug 301812, Jan 7
an American author and journalist who was one of the foremost men of letters of the Federalist Era. A Federalist, Dennie is best remembered for his series of essays entitled The Lay Preacher and as the founding editor of Port Folio, a journal espousing classical republican values. Port Folio was the most highly regarded and successful literary publication of...
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John Dennys

borndied
unknown1609
a poet and fisherman, pioneered Angling poetry in England. His only work The Secrets of Angling was the earliest English poetical treatise on fishing. John Dennys may have been an acquaintance of Shakespeare. His only work The Secrets of Angling was the earliest English poetical treatise on fishing. In it he wrote of a brook, River Boyd, formed from streams ...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Arthur Dent

borndied
unknown1607
an English Puritan cleric, known as an author and preacher. Dent served as a curate for three years to George Withers, at Danbury, Essex. He was on 17 December 1580 instituted to the rectory of South Shoebury, Essex, on the presentation of Robert Rich, 2nd Baron Rich. In 1582 he was one of the witnesses examined in support of charges brought against Robert W...
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Cross-listed in ClergyScientists

William Derham

borndied
1657, Nov 261735, Apr 5
an English clergyman, natural theologian and natural philosopher. He produced the earliest, reasonably accurate estimate of the speed of sound. In 1696, he published his Artificial Clockmaker, which went through several editions. The best known of his subsequent works are Physico-Theology, published in 1713; Astro-Theology, 1714; and Christo-Theology, 1730. ...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Edward Dering

borndied
1540 ca1576
an English priest and academic, known as a classical scholar, controversialist, supporter of Thomas Cartwright, and fiery preacher against his fellow clergy. Constantly in trouble from 1570, he was not found to be nonconformist in doctrine, but was an opponent of the episcopate. He was chosen by Parker as the scholar best qualified to reply to the Catholic S...
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Links (1)


David Derodon

aka: de Rodon
borndied
1600 ca1664
a French Calvinist theologian and philosopher. Derodon was born at Die, in the Dauphiné. He had the reputation of being one of the most eminent logicians of his time. His knowledge of philosophy was both extensive and profound. He taught philosophy at Orange, at Nismes, and at Geneva. He inclined to the doctrines of more
Links (1)


Nicolas des Escuteaux

borndied
1570 ca1628 ca
a French novelist from the early 17th century. He was responsible for 13 novels of love and adventure and one anthology published between 1601 and 1628. Des Escuteaux is one of the authors most often associated with the so-called "sentimental novel" (or "amours") published during the reign of more
Links (1)


Gedeon Tallemant des Reaux

aka: Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux
borndied
1619, Nov 71692, Nov 6
a French writer known for his Historiettes, a collection of short biographies. The Historiettes are invaluable for the literary history of the time.Des Réaux was a poet and contributed to the Guirlande de Julie.
Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Pierre-Joseph Desault

borndied
1738, Feb 61795, Jun 1
a French anatomist and surgeon. He was destined for a career in the Church, but his own inclination was towards the study of medicine; after learning something from the barber-surgeon of his native village, he was settled as an apprentice in the military hospital of Belfort, where he acquired some knowledge of anatomy and military surgery. Going to Paris at ...
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Guillaume Desautels

aka: Glaumalis du Vezelet, G. Tesbault, Terhault
borndied
15291599 ca
a French poet of the sixteenth century associated with La Pleiade. While not a member of the Pléiade, he was known as a major influence on the literary life of his time, if not as a major poet. Guillaume would have known most if not all of those poets, and supported for them in their use of the French language in their poetry. While he too wrote in vernacul...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Scientists

Rene Descartes

aka: René , Renatus Cartesius
bornactivedied
1596, Mar 311619-16501650, Feb 11
a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. Dubbed the father of modern western philosophy, much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day. He spent about 20 years of his life in the Dutch Republic. Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy continues to be a standard text at most uni...
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Cross-listed in Performers

Henri Descremps

borndied
1746, Apr1826
a French magician who explained his art in a famous book, The White Magic Unveiled in 1784. He was a lawyer, mathematician and held a degree in law. He was attached to the embassy of France to the English Court as interpreter secretary before returning to France in 1783. His book -- among others he wrote -- obtained a great success at the time, as it gives a...
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Links (1)


Pierre Desfontaines

borndied
16851745
a French journalist, translator and popular historian. Known today for his quarrels with Voltaire, Desfontaines can be regarded as the founder of the new literary criticism and journalism in France, insofar as he sought to found his criticism on aesthetic and ethical...
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Links (1)


Jean Desmarets

aka: Sieur de Saint-Sorlin
borndied
15951676, Oct 28
a French writer and dramatist. He was a founding member, and the first to occupy seat 4 of the Académie française in 1634. It was at Richelieu's request that he began to write for the theatre. In this genre he produced a comedy long regarded as a masterpiece, Les...
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Philippe Desportes

borndied
15461606, Oct 5
a French poet. Philippe Desportes was born in Chartres. While serving as secretary to the bishop of Le Puy he visited Italy, where he learned Italian poetry. This experience became a good account. On his return to France he attached himself to the duke of Anjou, and followed him to Cracow on his election as king of Poland. Nine months in Poland satisfied the...
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Links (1)


Ellin Devis

borndied
1746, Dec1820, Feb
a schoolmistress and author of The Accidence (1775), a popular eighteenth-century grammar. Devis taught at several schools in fashionable areas of London; her pupils include Maria Edgeworth, Frances Burney (later novelist Madame d'Arblay) and her sister Susannah, Hester Thrale and later her daughter Cecilia Piozzi. While Devis was mistress of the Queen’s S...
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Cross-listed in Commerce

Timothy Dexter

borndied
1747, Jan 221806, Oct 23
an American businessman noted for his writing and eccentricity. At the end of the American Revolutionary War, he bought large amounts of deprecated Continental currency that was worthless at the time. At war's end, the U.S. government made good on its notes at one percent of face value, while Massachusetts paid its own notes at par. His arbitrage enabled him...
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Juan Bautista Diamante

borndied
1625, Aug 291687, Nov 2
a minor Spanish dramatist of the school of Calderón, was the son of a Portuguese mother and a Sicilian merchant of Greek parentage who came to Madrid some time before 1631. He began writing for the stage in the early 1650s, gained favour at the courts of Philip IV and Charles II, and became a knight of St. John (of Malta) in 1660. It has been suggested tha...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Casimiro Diaz

aka: Díaz
borndied
16931746
a Spanish Augustinian friar who accompanied the first Spanish expedition to the Cordillera. Díaz wrote Conquistas de las Islas Philipinas in 1718 (published in Valladolid in 1890). He also wrote Parrocho (1745). Casimiro Díaz reported, "The Igorots are a barbaric people." He was procurator-general (1719), twice provincial secretary (1722), definitor (1725)...
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Cross-listed in Explorers

Bernal Diaz del Castillo

borndied
1494 ca1584
a Spanish conquistador, who participated as a foot soldier in the conquest of Mexico with Hernán Cortés. He is often considered the "Man of Castilla" having many relationships due to his handsome demeanor. As a soldier of fortune, he participated in expeditions to Tierra Firme, to Cuba, and to the Yucatán peninsula before joining Cortés. In his later yea...
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Charles Dickens

bornactivedied
1812, Feb 71832-18701870, Jun 9
an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting...
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Timeline (9)Links (22)


Cross-listed in GovernanceLegal

John Dickinson

borndied
1732, Nov 81808, Feb 14
a solicitor and politician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware known as the "Penman of the Revolution" for his twelve Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, published individually in 1767 and 1768. As a member of the First Continental Congress, where he was a signee to the Continental Association, Dickinson drafted most of the 1774 Petit...
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Jonathan Dickinson

borndied
16631722
a Quaker merchant from Port Royal, Jamaica who was shipwrecked on the southeast coast of Florida in 1696, along with his family and the other passengers and crew members of the ship. The party was held captive by Jobe ("Hoe-bay") Indians for several days, and then was allowed to travel by small boat and on foot the 230 miles up the coast to Saint Augustine....
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Links (1)


Denis Diderot

bornactivedied
1713, Oct 51743-17821784, Jul 31
a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent figure during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. Diderot's litera...
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Cross-listed in ArtistsComposers

Albert Christoph Dies

borndied
17551822, Dec 28
a German painter, composer, and biographer. Copying pictures, chiefly by Salvator Rosa, for a livelihood, his taste led him to draw and paint from nature in Tivoli, Albano and other picturesque places in the vicinity of Rome. Naples, the birthplace of his favorite master, he visited more than once for the same reasons. During the Rome visit, Dies also compos...
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Wentworth Dillon

aka: 4th Earl of Roscommon
borndied
1633 ca1685, Jan 18
an English poet. His reputation as a didactic writer and critic rests on his blank verse translation of the Ars Poetica (1680) and his Essay on Translated Verse (1684). The essay contained the first definite enunciation of the principles of poetic diction, which were to be fully developed in the reign of Queen Anne. Roscommon, who was fastidious in his notio...
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William Dimond

bornactivedied
1750 ca1800-18301837 ca
a playwright, the eldest surviving son of William Wyatt Dimond (c. 1750-1812), actor and theatrical manager, and his wife, Matilda Martha, née Baker (d. 1823), was born at Bath, where Dimond senior managed the Theatre Royal jointly with the theatre at Bristol.


Cross-listed in Physicians

Johann Conrad Dippel

borndied
1673, Aug 101734, Apr 25
a German pietist theologian, alchemist and physician. Circa 1700 he turned to Hermetic studies and alchemy as a key to nature. Between 1700 and 1702 he engaged in a bitter dispute with the Reformed Court Preacher Conrad Broeske in Offenbach, with whom he shared millenarian hopes for soon-coming renewal in Christendom. Dippel's reputation as a controversial t...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Governance

Benjamin Disraeli

bornactivedied
1804, Dec 211826-18801881, Apr 19
a British politician and writer, who twice served as Prime Minister. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party, defining its policies and its broad outreach. Disraeli is remembered for his influential voice in world affairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone, and his one-nation conserv...
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Cross-listed in Explorers

Karl von Ditmar

borndied
1822, Aug 271892, Apr 13
a Baltic German geologist and explorer, who travelled in and contributed to the scientific understanding of Kamchatka. In 1851 Ditmar undertook a voyage to Kamchatka which would last until 1854, and there undertook important scientific investigations. His account of the travels in Kamchatka, published first in 1890, is still used by scientists involved in st...
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Matija Divkovic

borndied
15631631, Aug 21
a Bosnian Franciscan writer. He is considered to be the founder of the literature of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1611 Matija Divkovic traveled to the Republic of Venice, where he first had the letters of Bosnian Cyrillic molded, and then printed both works. In 1612, Divkovic came to the monastery of Kreševo and started writing his greatest and most important...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

John Dod

aka: Decalogue Dod
borndied
1549 ca1645
a non-conforming English clergyman, taking his nickname for his emphasis on the Ten Commandments. He is known for his widely circulated writings. Although he lost one means of livlihood because of Puritan beliefs, he had important support from sympathetic members of the Puritan gentry throughout a long career. He was vicar of Hanwell, Oxfordshire, from 1585,...
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Cross-listed in PhysiciansScientists

Rembert Dodoens

aka: Rembertus Dodonaeus
borndied
1517, Jun 291585, Mar 10
a Flemish physician and botanist. Dodoens was born in Mechelen. In 1530 he began his studies in medicine, cosmography and geography at the University of Leuven, where he graduated in 1535. He established himself as a physician in Mechelen in 1538. He married Kathelijne De Bruyn(e) in 1539. He had a short stay in Basel (1542–1546). He turned down a chair at...
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Roger Dodsworth

borndied
15851654
an English antiquary. He devoted himself early to antiquarian research, in which he was greatly assisted by the fact that his father, Matthew Dodsworth, was registrar of York Minster, and could give him access to the records preserved there. At various times in his life he was able to study the records in the library of Sir Robert Cotton, in Skipton Castle a...
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Sebastiano Dolci

borndied
16991777
a Ragusan writer. In 1750 he published a biography of Saint Jerome. He joined the Franciscans at the age of 14 years, in 1744 he wrote about the Franciscan Order in Ragusa. He was also a great student of the "Ilyrian" (Croatian) language, publishing several books on this subject. In the theological scope, Slade translated the epistle of Hyeronymi Francisci Z...
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Caterina Dolfin

borndied
1736, May 81793, Nov 14
an Italian (Venetian) poet. Caterina was the daughter of the Nobilhuomo Ser Antonio Giovanni Dolfin and the Nobildonna Donata Salamon, members of a secondary branch of one of the most ancient families of venetian aristocrary. Caterina's father was knowned to have squandered the family fortune, leaving serious debts to his wife and daughter uppon his death in...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

John Donne

borndied
1572, Jan 221631, Mar 31
an English poet and a cleric in the Church of England. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiv...
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Jean Donneau de Vise

aka: Donneau de Visé
borndied
16381710, Jul 8
a French journalist, royal historian ("historiographe du roi"), playwright and publicist. He was founder of the literary, arts and society gazette "le Mercure galant" (founded in 1672) and was associated with the "Moderns" in the "Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns". In 1664, Donneau de Visé produced a heterogenous literary compilation under the title ...
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Claude Joseph Dorat

aka: Le Chevalier Dorat
borndied
1734, Dec 311780, Apr 29
a French writer. He was born in Paris, of a family consisting of generations of lawyers, and he joined the corps of the kings musketeers. He became fashionable for his work, Réponse d'Abélard à Héloise ("Abelard's Answer to Heloise"), and followed up this first success with a number of heroic epistles, Les Victimes de l'amour, ou lettres de quelques aman...
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Fyodor Dostoyevsky

aka: Dostoevsky
borndied
1821, Nov 111881, Feb 9
a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel, Poor Folk, was published in 1...
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Cross-listed in Pirates

Jean Doublet

aka: Jean-François
borndied
1655, Nov1728, Dec 20
a French corsair, born in Honfleur in the last months of 1655, and dead the December 20, 1728 in Barneville-la-Bertran . He is one of the sixteen children of Madeleine Fontaine and François Doublet, apothecary turned merchant captain, owner and adventurous entrepreneur. Jean Doublet remains unknown, despite a long career at sea of forty-eight years, to say ...
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Camille Doucet

borndied
1812, May 161895, Apr 1
a French poet and playwright. He was a solicitor's clerk and notary, the secretary of Baron Fain in the cabinet of King Louis-Philippe, then the general manager of theater administration at the ministry of the Emperor's Household in 1863. Camille Doucet was the author of several poems and numerous plays: vaudevilles, operas, comedies in verse. While some of...
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Cross-listed in ClergyGovernance

Gavin Douglas

aka: Gawin
bornactivedied
1474 ca1496-15211522, Sep
a Scottish bishop, makar and translator. Although he had an important political career, it is for his poetry that he is now chiefly remembered. His principal pioneering achievement was the Eneados, a full and faithful vernacular translation of the Aeneid of Virgil and the first successful example of its kind in any Anglic language. Other extant...
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Frederick Douglass

borndied
1818, Feb1895, Feb 20
an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement from Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writings. In his time he was described by abolitionists as a living counter-example ...
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Timeline (2)Links (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyMilitaryGovernance

Sir George Downing

aka: 1st Baronet
borndied
16231684, Jul 22
an Anglo-Irish preacher, soldier, statesman, diplomat, turncoat and spy, after whom Downing Street in London is named. As Treasury Secretary he is credited with instituting major reforms in public finance. His influence was substantial on the passage and substance of the mercantilist Navigation Acts. The Acts strengthened English commercial and Naval power, ...
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Cross-listed in Composers

Paghtasar Dpir

borndied
1683, Jun 71768
A leading figure during the revitalization period of Armenian culture as a poet, musician, scientist, printer, and a luminary of national and educational movements. Dpir’s musical creativity is clearly influenced by traditional troubadour, religious, as well as contemporary eastern and minstrel music. For his secular and especially for his love songs, he b...
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Cross-listed in Physicians

James Drake

borndied
16671707
an English physician and political writer, a Jacobite and Fellow of the Royal Society. He was born in Cambridge, where his father was a solicitor. He was educated at Wivelingham and Eton College, was admitted at Caius College, Cambridge, in 1684, and graduated B.A. and M.A. In 1693 he went to London, and was encouraged in the study of medicine by Sir Thomas ...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Physicians

Nathan Drake

bornactivedied
1766, Jan 151780-18171836
an English essayist and physician. Drake was apprenticed to a doctor in York in 1780, and in 1786 proceeded to Edinburgh University, where he took his degree as M.D. in 1789. In 1790 he set up as a general practitioner at Sudbury, Suffolk. Drake's works include several volumes of literary essays, and some papers contributed to medical periodicals, but his mo...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Thomas Drant

borndied
1540 ca1578
an English clergyman and poet. Work of his on prosody was known to Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser. He was in the intellectual court circle known as the 'Ar...
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Cross-listed in Scientists

John William Draper

bornactivedied
1811, May 51832-18811882, Jan 4
an English-American scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian and photographer. He is credited with producing the first clear photograph of a female face (1839–40) and the first detailed photograph of the moon in 1840. He was also the first president of the American Chemical Society (1876–77) and a founder of the New York University School of...
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Michael Drayton

borndied
15631631, Dec 23
an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era. In 1591 he produced his first book, The Harmony of the Church, a volume of spiritual poems, dedicated to Lady Devereux. It is notable for a version of the Song of Solomon, executed with considerable richness of expression. However, with the exception of forty copies, seized by the Archbishop of C...
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Links (1)


Cornelis Drebbel

borndied
15721633, Nov 7
the Dutch builder of the first navigable submarine in 1620. Drebbel was an innovator who contributed to the development of measurement and control systems, optics and chemistry. Drebbel's most famous written work was Een kort Tractaet van de Natuere der Elementen (A short treatise of the nature of the elements) (Haarlem, 1621). He was also involved in the in...
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Cross-listed in Composers

Annette von Droste-Hulshoff

aka: Droste-Hülshoff
borndied
1797, Jan 10/121848, May 24
a 19th-century German writer and composer. She was one of the most important German poets and author of the novella Die Judenbuche. She composed poetry, but not prolifically. The collection appeared in 1838 in a print-run of 500 copies, of which only 74 were sold. Droste found the failure of her book "humiliating." Droste received early instruction in...
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Thomas Drue

aka: Drewe
borndied
1586 ca1627
an English Protestant playwright. He wrote The Life of the Duchess of Suffolk. It has also been suggested that he wrote The Bloody Banquet (By T. D., 1620, 4to). However others have attributed it to Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton. An unpublished play, the ‘Woman's Mistake,’ is ascribed in the ‘Stationers' Registers,’ 9 Sept. 1653, to Robert Daven...
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William Drummond

borndied
1585, Dec 131649, Dec 4
a Scottish poet. Drummond's first publication appeared in 1613, an elegy on the death of Henry, prince of Wales, called Teares on the Death of Meliades (Moeliades, 3rd edit. 1614). The poem shows the influence of Spenser's and Sidney's pastoralism. In the same year he published an anthology of the elegies of Chapman, Wither and others, entitled Mausoleum, or...
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William Drury

bornactivedied
unknown1640sunknown
an English dramatist. Drury was an English gentleman "of singular parts and learning". He was for some time imprisoned in England on account of his adherence to the Catholic religion, but about 1616 he was released through the intercession of Count Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador in London. In October 1618 he began to teach poetry and rhetoric at the Englis...
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Charles Dryden

borndied
16661704
the chamberlain to Pope Innocent XII, He was the eldest son of John Dryden the poet. He was educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Oxford. In 1683, Dryden wrote some poems, one of which, in Latin, appeared in the second Miscellany. He executed the seventh satire for his father's translation of Juvenal in 1692. He drowned in the Thames.
Links (1)


John Dryden [1]

borndied
1631, Aug 91700, May 1
an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who was made England's first Poet Laureate in 1668. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. more
Timeline (1)Links (1)


John Dryden [2]

borndied
16681701, Jan 28
a writer. He was second son of the poet John Dryden (1631–1700) and was educated at Westminster and University College, Oxford. He translated Juvenal's fourteenth satire for his father's version, and wrote one mediocre comedy. An account of a tour in Italy and Malta, made by him in 1700 in company with a Mr. Cecil, was published in 1776.
Links (1)


Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas

borndied
15441590, Jul
a Gascon Huguenot courtier and poet. Trained as a doctor of law, he served in the court of Henri de Navarre for most of his career. Du Bartas was celebrated across sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe for his divine poetry, particularly L'Uranie (1584), Judit (1584), La Sepmaine; ou, Creation du monde (1578), and La Seconde Semaine (1584-1603).
Links (1)


Joachim du Bellay

bornactivedied
1522 ca1547-15591560, Jan 1
a French poet, critic, and a member of the Pléiade. In 1548 appeared the Art poétique of Thomas Sébillet. The famous manifesto of the Pléiade, the Défense et illustration de la langue française (Defense and Illustration of the French Language, 1549), was at once a complement and a refutation of Sébillet's treatise. This book (inspired in part by Spero...
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Links (7)


Martin du Bellay

aka: Sieur de Langey
borndied
14951559
a French nobleman and chronicler, and Prince of Yvetot by marriage. He was born and died in Glatigny in the PercheHe was the third son of Louis du Bellay and Marguerite de la Tour Landry He was, like his brothers, a skilled negotiator, a great captain and a patron of literature. His memoirs of the Italian Wars form one of the most significant primary sources...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Jean-François Du Bellay du Resnel

borndied
1692, Jun 291761, Feb 25
a French ecclesiastic, writer and translator. Du Resnel came early to the college of Jesuits of Rouen , where he made ??his humanities . He was then received in the Congregation of the Oratory of Paris in 1710. He wrote memoirs and essays, published among others in the Journal of sçavans . The works of Father Du Resnel, considered a poet, be reduced to two...
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Links (1)


Louis-Gabriel Du Buat-Nancay

aka: Du Buat-Nançay
borndied
1732, Mar 21787, Sep 18
a French dramatist, historian, writer, diplomat and translator. He was born near Livarot and died in Nançay. He was Minister of France at Dresden and Regensburg , after which he left the business, settled in Germany , was married and came to finish his last years in his retirement from Berry. His main writings are: Origins, or the Old Government of France, ...
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Maxime Du Camp

borndied
1822, Feb 81894, Feb 9
a French writer and photographer. Du Camp traveled in Europe and the East between 1844 and 1845, and again between 1849 and 1851 in company with Gustave Flaubert. After his return, Du Camp wrote about his traveling experiences. Flaubert also wrote about his ...
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Andre du Ryer

aka: André
bornactivedied
1580 ca1630s-1640s1660/1672
a French orientalist who wrote the third western translation of the Qur'an. He was a diplomatic agent in Constantinople and the consul of France in Alexandria in Egypt. He became secretary interpreter of King Louis XIII for oriental languages ??after his return to...
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Pierre du Ryer

borndied
16061658
a French dramatist. His early comedies are loosely modelled on those of Alexandre Hardy, but after the production of the Cid (1636) he became an imitator of Pierre Corneille. Du Ryer was a prolific dramatist. Among his other works were Saul (printed 1642), and a comedy, Les Vendanges de Suresnes (1635 or 1636).
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Francois du Souhait

aka: François
borndied
1575 ca1617
a French language author (translator, novelist, poet, satirist, moral philosopher) of the late 16th and early 17th century from the Duchy of Lorraine (at the time, a sovereign court with ties to France). Du Souhait was the author of seven novels, a collection of short stories (for which he is today most well-known), a collection of poems, a pastoral, a trage...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in ClergyLegal

Guillaume du Vair

borndied
1556, Mar 71621, Aug 3
a French author and lawyer. After taking holy orders, he exercised only legal functions for most of his career. However, from 1617 till his death he was Bishop of Lisieux. In 1595, Vair published his treatise De l'éloquence française et des raisons pour quoi elle est demeurée si basse, in which he criticizes the orators of his day, adding examples from t...
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Links (1)


Cross-listed in Clergy

Isaac Dubourdieu

borndied
1597 ca1700 ca
a French Reformed minister. He was a French Protestant minister at Montpellier, who was driven from that place in 1682, and took refuge in London, where he is said by a contemporary author to have "held primary rank" among his fellow pastors, and to have been "wise, laborious, and entirely devoted to the welfare of the refugee church" In 1684 he published A ...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

James Duchal

borndied
16971761
an Irish Presbyterian divine. In 1728 he published a volume of sermons, which show the influence of Francis Hutcheson. Duchal's studies were classical and philosophical rather than biblical. Late in life he returned to the study of Hebrew, to test the positions of the Hutchinsonian system, in which he found nothing congenial to his ideas. Duchal was an indef...
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Stephen Duck

borndied
1705 ca1756
an English poet whose career reflected both the Augustan era's interest in "naturals" (natural geniuses) and its resistance to classlessness. In 1730, Duck combined some of the poetic pieces he had been writing and wrote The Thresher's Labour, a poem that described the difficulty of field work. The poem was celebrated throughout London society, and he soon w...
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Richard Duckworth

bornactivedied
unknown1690sunknown
an English campanologist. Duckworth, a native of Leicestershire, is probably identical with the Richard Duckworth mentioned, under date 4 May 1648, in the ‘Register of Visitors of Oxford University appointed by the Long parliament in 1647’ as one of the ‘submitting’ undergraduates of New Inn Hall, and with the Richard Ducker who, according to the sam...
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Francois Guillaume Ducray-Duminil

aka: François
borndied
17611819, Oct 29
a French novelist, poet and songwriter. A member of several literary societies, most notably of the Société du Caveau, he wrote poetry and lyrics as well as a few plays that were never produced. He is best known as a writer for children and young adults, a genre in which he became extremely popular. Worried about the moral message of his works, he saw to i...
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John Dudley [2]

borndied
17621856, Jan 7
an English writer. Dudley was the eldest son of the Rev. John Dudley, vicar of Humberstone, Leicestershire. He was born at Humberstone, and educated at Uppingham School, whence he went to Clare Hall, Cambridge. He proceeded B.A. 1785, and M.A. 1788. In 1787 he was elected fellow, and in 1788 tutor. In 1794 he succeeded his father in the living of Humberston...
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Cross-listed in ExplorersCartographers

Sir Robert Dudley [2]

bornactivedied
1574, Aug 71594-16031649, Sep 6
an English explorer and cartographer. In 1594, he led an expedition to the West Indies, of which he wrote an account. The illegitimate son of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, he inherited the bulk of the Earl's estate in accordance with his father's will, ...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

George Duffield Jr.

borndied
1818, Sep 121888, Jul 6
an American Presbyterian minister and hymnodist. He was born to Presbyterian minister George Duffield. He graduated from Yale College and the Union Theological Seminary in New York. He was a pastor from 1840 to 1869 at numerous cities including Brooklyn, New York; Bloomfield, New Jersey; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Adrian, Michigan; Galesburg, Illinois; Sagi...
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Adelaide Dufrenoy

aka: Adélaïde Dufrénoy
borndied
17651825
a French poet and painter from Brittany. In 1787, her career as a writer started in earnest with a small work titled Boutade, to a friend. Also, she had a few of her poems published in the popular poetic periodical, the Almanach des Muses. The subsequent year, she tried her hand with theatre, and put on a play, l'Amour exilé des Cieux ("Love Exiled from the...
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William Dugdale

borndied
1605, Sep 121686, Feb 10
an English antiquary and herald. As a scholar he was influential in the development of medieval history as an academic subject. During his leisure at Oxford he collected material at the Bodleian Library and college libraries for his books. Following the surrender of Oxford in 1646 Dugdale returned to Blyth Hall and compounded for his estates under the terms ...
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Richard Duke

borndied
16581711
an English clergyman and poet, associated with the Tory writers of the Restoration era. He probably wrote much satirical verse, which can only be identified occasionally by internal evidence. Among works by Duke was the caustic satire on Titus Oates, printed by N...
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Cross-listed in Artists

Heiman Dullaart

borndied
1636, Feb 61684, May 6
a Dutch Golden Age painter and poet. He was a student of Rembrandt, but was better known for his poetry than for his artwork. His paintings, often trompe-l'oeils, can be seen in the Kröller-Müller Museum. As a poet he is remembered for his love sonnets Aan myne ui...
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Alexandre Dumas the Elder

borndied
1802, Jul 241870, Dec 5
a French writer. His works have been translated into nearly 100 languages, and he is one of the most widely read French authors. Many of his historical novels of high adventure were originally published as serials, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. His novels have be...
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Alexandre Dumas the Younger

bornactivedied
1824, Jul 271847-18871895, Nov 27
a French writer and dramatist, best known for Camille (a.k.a. The Lady of the Camellias). He was the son of Alexandre Dumas, père, also a writer and playwright. In 1844, Dumas moved to Saint-Germain-en-Laye to live with his father. There, he met Marie Duplessis, a young courtesan who would be the inspiration for his romantic novel The Lady of the Camellias...
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Jean Dumont

borndied
1667, Jan 131727, May 13
a French publisher. He followed the profession of arms but, not obtaining promotion so rapidly as he expected, he left the service and travelled through different parts of Europe. He stopped in Holland with the intention of publishing an account of his travels. But in the interval, at the request of his bookseller, he wrote and published several pamphlets, w...
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William Dunbar

aka: Dumbar
borndied
1455 ca1520 ca
a Scottish makar poet active in the late fifteenth century and the early sixteenth century. He was closely associated with the court of King James IV and produced a large body of work in Scots distinguished by its great variation in themes and literary styles. He wa...
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Maria Dorothea Dunckel

borndied
1799, Mar 131878, Nov 30
a Swedish poet, translator and playwright. Dunckel was born to the secretary Martin Altén and Kristina Dorotea Landwertz. She wrote her first theatre play-manuscript at the age of nine (1808), and after this, assisted her father with translations. Married in 1821 to the David Vilhelm Dunckel, vicar at the German parish of Stockholm, and from 1823, vicar at ...
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William Dunkin

borndied
1709 ca1765
an Irish poet. As a young man he had a reputation for foolish acts and clever poems. He was introduced to Jonathan Swift, who became at once a very valuable patron to him. His ordination by the Archbishop of Cashel in 1735 and the increase of the annuity which ...
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Cross-listed in ArtistsPerformers

William Dunlap

bornactivedied
1766, Feb 191783-18341839, Sep 28
a pioneer of American theater. He was a producer, playwright, and actor, as well as a historian. He managed two of New York's earliest and most prominent theaters, the John Street Theatre (from 1796–98) and the Park Theatre (from 1798–1805). He was also an artist, despite losing an eye in childhood. In his lifetime he produced more than sixty plays, most...
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Cross-listed in Clergy

Charles Dunster

borndied
17501816, Apr
a British writer, and translator. He was the only son of the Rev. Charles Dunster, prebendary of Salisbury. He was admitted at Oriel College, Oxford, as a commoner in 1767, took his B.A. degree at the end of 1770, migrated early in 1771 to Balliol, and again in 1773 to Trinity. He was instituted to the Worcestershire rectories of Oddingley and Naunton Beauch...
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Richard Duppa

borndied
17701831, Jul 11
an English writer and a draughtsman. He was the son of William Duppa of Culmington, Shropshire. He studied art in Rome in his youth, and showed himself a skilful draughtsman. He matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, 9 November 1807, aged 37 and became a student of the Middle Temple, 7 February 1810. He graduated LL.B. at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1814. ...
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Diego Duran

aka: Durán
borndied
1537 ca1588
a Dominican friar best known for his authorship of one of the earliest Western books on the history and culture of the Aztecs, The History of the Indies of New Spain, a book that was much criticized in his lifetime for helping the "heathen" maintain their culture. Also known as the Durán Codex, The History of the Indies of New Spain was published c. 1581. D...
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Sergey Durov

borndied
18161869, Dec 6
a Russian poet, translator, writer, and political activist. A member of the Petrashevsky Circle and later the leader of his own underground group of intellectuals, Durov was arrested in 1849, spent 8 months in the Petropavloskaya Fortress, followed by 4 years in Omsk prison. In 1857 Durov returned from Siberia, and the ban on his literary activity was lifted...
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John Dury

borndied
15961680
a Scottish Calvinist minister and a significant intellectual of the English Civil War period. He made efforts to re-unite the Calvinist and Lutheran wings of Protestantism, hoping to succeed when he moved to Kassel in 1661, but he did not accomplish this. He was a prolific preacher, pamphleteer and writer. Dury gave a well-known sermon to the Parliament on 2...
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Jean Dussaulx

aka: Jean-Joseph, Dusaulx
borndied
1728, Dec 281799, Mar 16
a French politician. There is very little information available about the details of his life. He was a member of the upper house of parliament – the Council of Ancients – during the French Revolution. He was a writer known for his translations of Juvenal and also wrote volumes on history.
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Louis Dutens

borndied
1730, Jan 151812, May 23
a French writer born in Tours, of Protestant parents, who lived most of his life in Britain or in British service on the continent. He went to London, and there obtained a situation as tutor in a private family. In this position he learnt mathematics, Greek, Italian, Spanish and several oriental languages. He took orders, and was appointed chaplain and secre...
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Morus Dwyfech

bornactivedied
unknown1520s-1590unknown
a Welsh-language poet. There is very little information available concerning the details of his life. He was domestic bard to the Griffith family at Cefnamlwch on the Ll?n Peninsula in Gwynedd and took his bardic name from the River Dwyfech (now known as the Dwyfach).
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Sir Edward Dyer

borndied
1543, Oct1607, May
an English courtier and poet. He was employed by Elizabeth on a mission (1584) to the Low Countries, and in 1589 was sent to Denmark. In a commission to inquire into manors unjustly alienated from the crown in the west country he did not altogether please the queen, but nevertheless received a grant of some forfeited lands in Somerset in 1588. He was knighte...
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Mary Dyer

aka: Marie Barrett
borndied
1611 ca1660, Jun 1
an English and colonial American Puritan turned Quaker who was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony. She is one of the four executed Quakers known as the Boston martyrs. Before leaving Boston, Mary had given birth to a severely deformed infant that was stillborn. Because of the theol...
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Samuel Dyer

borndied
17251772
an English translator. He was an original member of the Ivy Lane Club formed by Samuel Johnson in the winter of 1749, which met weekly at the King's Head inn. Through the influence of Samuel Chandler he obtained the work of translating into Latin a number of tr...
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