Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Herero

(Encyclopedia)Herero hərārˈō [key], Bantu people, mainly in Namibia and Botswana. They number about 75,000. A pastoral tribe noted for their large cattle herds, the Herero probably migrated from the region of L...

Hall, James

(Encyclopedia)Hall, James, 1811–98, American geologist and paleontologist, b. Hingham, Mass., grad. Rensselaer School (later Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), 1832. An authority on stratigraphy and invertebrate ...

golem

(Encyclopedia)golem gōˈləm [key] [Heb.,=an undeveloped lump], in medieval Jewish legend, an automatonlike servant made of clay and given life by means of a charm, or shem [Heb.,=name, or the name of God]. Golems...

Girtin, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Girtin, Thomas gûrˈtən [key], 1775–1802, English draftsman and watercolorist. He was apprenticed to an engraver but was employed, together with J. M. W. Turner, to make topographical drawings. Gi...

Parnassians

(Encyclopedia)Parnassians pärnăsˈēənz [key], group of 19th-century French poets, so called from their journal the Parnasse contemporain. Issued from 1866 to 1876, it included poems of Leconte de Lisle, Banvill...

Browning, Orville Hickman

(Encyclopedia)Browning, Orville Hickman, 1806–81, U.S. Secretary of the Interior (1866–69), b. Harrison co., Ky. One of the organizers of the Republican party in Illinois, Browning helped secure his friend Linc...

Pye, John

(Encyclopedia)Pye, John, 1782–1874, English engraver, founder of modern landscape engraving. As an illustrator for popular art annuals, he executed plates for landscapes by J. M. W. Turner, Claude Lorrain, and Ga...

Duchamp, Marcel

(Encyclopedia)Duchamp, Marcel märsĕlˈ düshäNˈ [key], 1887–1968, French painter, brother of Raymond Duchamp-Villon and half-brother of Jacques Villon. Duchamp is noted for his cubist-futurist painting Nude D...

Crane, Hart

(Encyclopedia)Crane, Hart (Harold Hart Crane), 1899–1932, American poet, b. Garrettsville, Ohio. He published only two volumes of poetry during his lifetime, but those works established Crane as one of the most o...

Esdras

(Encyclopedia)Esdras ĕzˈdrəs [key] [Gr. from Heb. Ezra], name of several books found in the Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. The New Revised Standard Version (following the Authorized Version) maintai...