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John Dyer, poet, artist and priest, was born in Llanfynydd, Carmarthenshire. He was educated locally, then later sent to Westminster School, from where he returned to Wales to study law. In 1720 he went to London to study poetry and painting and was apprenticed to the portrait painter Jonathan Richardson. In London Dyer met many influential figures of the literary and artistic world, including Arthur Pond, George Vertue, Daniel Wray, Aaron Hill and Richard Savage. His sojourn in Italy from 1724 to 1725 yielded such poetic works as 'Written at Ocriculum' and 'The Ruins of Rome'. Publication of Dyer's poetry began in 1726 with 'Grongar Hill', a work inspired by his home landscape near Aberglasne. From 1730 to 1738 Dyer took over his aunt's farm at Mapleton in Worcestershire then, in 1738, he bought two farms of his own near Nuneaton in Warwickshire. In 1741 Dyer was ordained deacon and priest and served as rector of Catthorpe in Leicestershire until 1751; it was in Leicestershire that he began The Fleece, a major work on British wool production and world trade published in four books from 1750 to 1757. In 1751 Dyer moved to livings in Lincolnshire, where, at his home in Coningsby rectory, he died of consumption. Only seven of Dyer's paintings are known to survive. They include a self-portrait of the 1720s and sketches executed whilst in Italy.

Yr oedd William John Gruffydd (1881-1954) yn fardd, dramodydd, ysgolhaig, golygydd a beirniad. Cafodd ei fagu yng Ngorffwysfa, Bethel, sir Gaernarfon, a mynyddodd Ysgol Sir Caernarfon, ac astudiodd llenyddiaeth Saesneg yn ddiweddarach yng Ngholeg Iesu, Rhydychen. Yn 1904 fe'i penodwyd yn athro yn Ysgol Ramadeg Biwmares, ac yn 1906 penodwyd ef yn ddarlithydd mewn Celteg yng Ngholeg y Brifysgol, Caerdydd. Ar ôl gwasanaethu fel swyddog yn y llynges, 1915-1918, fe'i penodwyd yn Athro Ieithoedd Celtaidd yng Nghaerdydd ac arhosodd yn y swydd honno hyd ei ymddeoliad yn 1946. Prif faes ei ymchwil oedd Pedair Cainc y Mabinogi, a bu hefyd yn olygydd y cylchgrawn chwarterol Y Llenor, 1922-1951; ysgrifennodd tair drama, a chyfieithodd Antigone gan Sophocles i'r Gymraeg. Bu'n ymgeisydd seneddol fel Rhyddfrydwr yn 1943, gan gystadlu yn erbyn Saunders Lewis am sedd Prifysgol Cymru, er gwaethaf y ffaith ei fod yntau yn aelod blaenllaw o Blaid Cenedlaethol Cymru. Priododd a chael un mab.

Philip Henry Burton (1904-1995), theatre director and writer, was a teacher at the Port Talbot secondary school attended by Richard Burton (then Jenkins) during the early 1940s. Burton became Jenkins's legal guardian and the boy adopted his mentor's surname as his own. Burton nurtured Richard's theatrical talent and helped launch the younger man's acting career. Their relationship is recorded in Burton's Richard and Philip: The Burtons. A Book of Memories (London, 1992).

Emyr Humphreys (1919-), one of Wales' most significant writers and cultural activists, was born in Prestatyn and brought up in Trelawnyd, both Flintshire. He was educated at UCW, Aberystwyth, where he studied history, learnt Welsh, and where he became a Welsh nationalist. He had registered as a conscientious objector in 1939, and was sent to work in Pembrokeshire during the Second World War. Later in 1944 he was sent as a war relief worker to the Middle East and then to Italy until 1946, where he was an officer with the Save the Children Fund. He married in 1946, the daughter of a Congregational minister. He became a teacher, and taught at Wimbledon Technical College until 1951, and then at Pwllheli Grammar School. He worked for the BBC as Drama Producer from 1955 until 1965, when he became a lecturer in drama at the University College of North Wales, Bangor. In 1972, he left to become a full-time writer. He has won numerous prizes, including the Somerset Maugham Award in 1952 for his novel Hear and Forgive, and The Hawthornden Prize in 1958 for A Toy Epic, and has published articles in Planet and the Welsh Internationalist. He has published over twenty novels, including The Little Kingdom (1946), The Voice of a Stranger (1949), A Toy Epic (1958), The Anchor Tree (1980), A Change of Heart (1951), Hear and Forgive (1952), A Man's Estate (1955), The Italian Wife (1957), Outside the House of Baal (1965), National Winner (1971), Flesh and Blood (1974), The Best of Friends (1978), Salt of the Earth (1985), An Absolute Hero (1986), Open Secrets (1988), Bonds of Attachment (1991), The Gift (1973), Jones (1984), Unconditional Surrender (1996), The Gift of a Daughter (1998), Ghosts and Strangers (2001), Old People are a Problem (2003), and The Shop; a collection of short stories, Natives (1968), and four volumes of verse, Ancestor Worship (1970), Landscapes (1976), The Kingdom of Brân (1979), Pwyll a Rhiannon (1980). His book Emyr Humphreys: Conversation and Reflections (2004), bring his uncollected writings together.