The earliest of the eighteen biographical essays in this volume was that on Crabbe, which had appeared in extended form in the London Magazine for May 1821. Only four others, on Edward Irving, Horne Tooke, Walter Scott and Lord Eldon, had been previously published. Both Malthus and Godwin, now an ageing neglected man, were among the other subjects, as were Jeremy Bentham, Coleridge, Byron and Wordsworth.