The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) Volume IV.

This volume opens a window onto a literary world that predates Romanticism by nearly half a century. Theophilus Cibber, himself a actor-playwright of considerable notoriety, presents lives of the poets with an intimacy and candor that later literary historians would seldom attempt. Here we encounter Peter Motteux, the French-born translator who mastered English letters only to meet a violent end, and Mary (Mrs.) Manley, whose scandalous novels and theatrical works challenged every convention for women writers in Augustan England. Cibber writes not as a distant biographer but as a participant in the literary wars of his time, offering portraits that are part celebration, part polemic, and wholly absorbing. The poets collected here were once the celebrities of their age; many have since faded into obscurity, but their stories illuminate the fierce debates over translation, gender, commerce, and fame that shaped English literature before it took its Romantic turn. For readers curious about the literary ecosystem that produced Pope, Swift, and Defoe, this volume provides indispensable context and endless provocation.