William Roscoe (1753-1831) was a lawyer and banker in Liverpool and a patron of the arts there. He wrote poetry and became a collector of books and paintings, with a particular focus on Italian works. In 1795, he published the first English-language biography of Lorenzo de Medici, a work that had occupied his spare time for some ten years and that gained him a wide audience. His biography of Leo X, who was Lorenzo’s son, was something of a sequel to the former work, and although it drew criticism from Catholics and Protestants, it too went through multiple editions. Roscoe was elected to Parliament in 1806, but his advocacy for abolition of the slave trade was a dangerous position in Liverpool and his political career quickly ended. The 1816 bankruptcy of his bank marred the last period of Roscoe’s life and forced him to sell most of his collection, but he remained active in civic affairs, helping to found the Liverpool Royal Institution, a learned society. He continued to write works of poetry, biography, and botany and remained one of the best-known men of letters in the English-speaking world (Philadelphia National Gazette and Literary Register, 11 Aug. 1831; DNB description begins H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, In Association with The British Academy, From the Earliest Times to the Year 2000, Oxford, 2004, 60 vols. description ends ; RS description begins J. Jefferson Looney and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, Princeton, 2004- , 15 vols. description ends , 1:164n).