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Dickens, Charles

(Encyclopedia)Dickens, Charles, 1812–70, English author, b. Portsmouth, one of the world's most popular, prolific, and skilled novelists. Charles Dickens is one of the giants of English literature. He wrote fro...

Browne, Hablot Knight

(Encyclopedia)Browne, Hablot Knight hăbˈlō [key], pseud. Phiz, 1815–82, English illustrator. At 21 he was chosen by Charles Dickens to illustrate Pickwick Papers. His success was immediate, and in due course h...

Broadstairs and Saint Peter's

(Encyclopedia)Broadstairs and Saint Peter's, town, Kent, SE England. The town is in the region known as the Isle of Thanet. It is a residential area and resort and wa...

Gadshill

(Encyclopedia)Gadshill gădzˈhĭl [key], low hill, Kent, SE England, near Rochester. In Shakespeare's Henry IV it was the scene of Falstaff's robberies. Charles Dickens lived there, at Gadshill Place, from 1856 un...

Portsmouth, city, England

(Encyclopedia)Portsmouth, city and unitary authority (2011 pop. 205,056), S England, on Spithead Channel. The city includes Portsea (naval station), Southsea (residential district and resort), and the old town of P...

Forster, John

(Encyclopedia)Forster, John, 1812–76, English biographer and critic. He was influential as literary and dramatic critic of the London Examiner. His Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth (5 vol., 1836–39) e...

Rochester, town, England

(Encyclopedia)Rochester, town, SE England, on the Medway River, chief town of the borough of Medway, which also includes Chatham and Gillingham. Cement, heavy machinery, electronic equipment, precision tools, and c...

Williams, Emlyn

(Encyclopedia)Williams, Emlyn, 1905–87, Welsh actor and dramatist. His best-known plays are Night Must Fall (1935) and The Corn Is Green (1941). His Collected Plays were published in 1961. As an actor he is noted...

Holdsworth, Sir William Searle

(Encyclopedia)Holdsworth, Sir William Searle, 1871–1944, British legal historian. He was (1903–8) professor of constitutional law at University College, London. After 1922 he was Vinerian professor of English l...

Lowell

(Encyclopedia)Lowell, city (1990 pop. 103,439), a seat of Middlesex co., NE Mass., at the confluence of the Merrimack and Concord rivers; settled 1653, set off from Chelmsford 1826, inc. as a city 1836. High-techno...