"In early October 1730 Duck travelled to Windsor to be presented to the queen. ... Duck was well received by the queen, who gave him an annuity of £30 or £50 and a house. In 1733 she made him a yeoman of the guard, and in 1735 keeper of the queen's library in Merlin's Cave, a Gothic building in Richmond Gardens, a post he filled with diligence and taste." (ODNB)
Most of what is known of Bentley's life comes from a letter of 23 July 1790, addressed to her patron and first editor, the Revd John Walker, and included among the prefatory materials to both her volumes of verse. (ODNB)
Grieve was on intimate terms with James Hogg, who contributed to his Forest Minstrel
Burns wrote of Turnbull: "Possibly, as he is an old friend of mine, I may be prejudiced in his favour: but I like some of his pieces very much" (ODNB)
Woodhouse’s earliest poems represented petitions to William Shenstone, who had prohibited ‘the rabble’ from visiting his ornamental gardens, The Leasowes, due to their propensity for picking flowers - rather than admiring the scenery with a detached comportment. Keegan (2002) suggests that Woodhouse’s affirmations to Shenstone respond to the conviction that the role of the lower orders in tilling the earth and concentrating on the produce it might yield precluded an ability to appreciate nature’s beauties.
Hughes sponsored the publication of Whitmore's 1859 volume, Gilbert Marlowe and other poems, with a preface by the author of ‘Tom Brown's school days’ (Cambridge: Macmillan, 1859)