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Mishima, Yukio

(Encyclopedia)Mishima, Yukio yo͞oˈkēō mĭshˈēmä [key], 1925–70, Japanese author, b. Tokyo. His original name was Kimitake Hiraoka and he was born into a samurai family. Mishima wrote novels, short stories,...

Frank, Anne

(Encyclopedia)Frank, Anne, 1929–45, German diarist, b. Frankfurt as Anneliese Marie Frank. In order to escape Nazi persecution, her family emigrated (1933) to Amsterdam, where her father Otto became a business ow...

Rodgers, Richard Charles

(Encyclopedia)Rodgers, Richard Charles, 1902–79, American composer, b. New York City. Rodgers studied at Columbia and the Institute of Musical Art, New York City. He met both of his future collaborators, Lorenz H...

Plath, Sylvia

(Encyclopedia)Plath, Sylvia, 1932–63, American poet, b. Boston. Educated at Smith College and Cambridge, Plath published poems even as a child and won many academic and literary awards. Her first volume of poetry...

Bowie, David

(Encyclopedia)Bowie, David, 1947–2016, British rock-and-roll singer and songwriter who successfully, merged rock, art, and fashion, b. London as David Robert Jones. After singing with five different bands in the ...

Lipchitz, Jacques

(Encyclopedia)Lipchitz, Jacques zhäk lēpshētsˈ [key], 1891–1973, French sculptor, b. Lithuania as Chaim Jacob Lipchitz. From 1909, Lipchitz studied in Paris, where he became a member of the Esprit Nouveau gro...

Murdoch, Dame Iris

(Encyclopedia)Murdoch, Dame Iris (Dame Jean Iris Murdoch) mûrˈdŏk [key], 1919–99, British novelist and philosopher, b. Dublin, Ireland, grad. Oxford (1942). In 1948 she was named lecturer in philosophy at Oxfo...

Helen

(Encyclopedia)Helen, in Greek mythology, the most beautiful of women; daughter of Leda and Zeus, and sister of Castor and Pollux and Clytemnestra. While still a young girl Helen was abducted to Attica by Theseus an...

gender

(Encyclopedia)gender [Lat. genus=kind], in grammar, subclassification of nouns or nounlike words in which the members of the subclass have characteristic features of agreement with other words. The term gender is n...