Part one of the continuing series entitled Painted Histories indexes leading figures in two significant phases of poetic expression in English literature: the Elizabethans, including William Shakespeare, John Webster and Sir Philip Sidney to the Romantic movement of the early 19th century: Lord Byron, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

ELIZABETHAN POETS Queen Elizabeth I William Shakespeare Edmund Spenser Christopher Marlowe Edward De Vere Ben Johnson John Donne Michael Drayton Thomas Campion Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset Johjn Lyley Thomas Nashe George Puttenham Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey Sir Walter Raleigh Sir Philip Sidney Barnabe Googe John Fletcher George Turbeville Thomas Decker John Webster Thomas Wyatt Thomas Kydd John Harington George Chapman George Peele Richard Hooker George Gascoigne Robert Greene Sir Thomas Overbury Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban Sir Henry Wotton William Byrd Orlando Gibbons Mary Herbert, countess of Pembroke Chidiock Tichborne Samuel Daniel

THE ROMANTICS John Keats Charles Lamb Robert Southey Lord Byron Thomas De Quincy William Wordsworth Dorothy Wordsworth John Clare Percy Bysshe Shelley Joanna Baillie Robert Burns William Blake Charlotte Smith Felicia Hemans Samuel Taylor Coleridge William Hazlitt Alfred Lord Tennison WB Yeats TS Eliot Dylan Thomas Sylvia Plath Ted Hughes