John Barbour was a 14th century Scottish poet, church minister and royal courtier who, it is believed, was the first to write in a Germanic version of the Middle English language known as Scots. This variety was popular in the Lowlands of Scotland while Gaelic was spoken in the Highlands and Islands regions, and still is to some degree. His most famous piece of ...
John Arbuthnot was an intellectually gifted man who was a satirist, physician and mathematician. He is often described as a true polymath and was responsible for the invention, in 1712, of a character named John Bull who would go on to symbolise “middle England” in political and sociological posters, pamphlets and publications. He was one of the founder members of a London literary ...
John Allan Wyeth was an American writer, artist and school teacher. His poignant pieces written about the First World War earned him the epithet “war poet” but it actually took until the year 2008 for this to happen. This was when his book This Man’s Army: A War in Fifty-Odd Sonnets, originally published 80 years before, was reprinted. It became one of the ...
John Addington Symonds was a 19th century English poet, biographer, literary historian and critic. He also taught at a number of establishments in Bristol. His life took a curious course in that he married and had children but was also an enthusiastic advocate of homosexuality, espousing pederasty and egalitarianism in equal measures. Indeed, one of his poems (simply called Hymn) suggested a utopian ...
Johannes Carl Andersen was a Danish-born New Zealand poet and anthropologist who was an authority on Maori folklore and customs. He also held down an administrative job with the Department of Lands and Survey for almost three decades. He was born on the 14th March 1873 in a small Jutland village called Klakring, the son of a watchmaker. The family emigrated to New ...
