Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

400 results found

Cranmer, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Cranmer, Thomas krănˈmər [key], 1489–1556, English churchman under Henry VIII; archbishop of Canterbury. A lecturer at Jesus College, Cambridge, he is said to have come to the attention of the ki...

fashion

(Encyclopedia)fashion, in dress, the prevailing mode affecting modifications in costume. Styles in Asia have been characterized by freedom from change, and ancient Greek and Roman dress preserved the same flowing l...

flower

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Longitudinal cross section of a flower at the time of fertilization, showing a pollen grain and a pollen tube. flower, name for the specialized part of a plant containing the reproductive orga...

Lawrence, D. H.

(Encyclopedia)Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert Lawrence), 1885–1930, English author, one of the primary shapers of 20th-century fiction. Lawrence believed that industrialized Western culture was dehumanizing beca...

Tudor

(Encyclopedia)Tudor, royal family that ruled England from 1485 to 1603. Its founder was Owen Tudor, of a Welsh family of great antiquity, who was a squire at the court of Henry V and who married that king's widow, ...

Whitewater, in U.S. history

(Encyclopedia)Whitewater, popular name for a failed 1970s Arkansas real estate venture by the Whitewater Development Corp., in which Gov. (later President) Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, were pa...

Wilde, Oscar

(Encyclopedia)Wilde, Oscar (Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde), 1854–1900, Irish author and wit, b. Dublin. He is most famous for his sophisticated, brilliantly witty plays, which were the first since the come...

Oxford, University of

(Encyclopedia)Oxford, University of, at Oxford, England, one of the oldest English-language universities in the world. The university was a leading center of learning throughout the Middle Ages; such scholars as Ro...

Howells, William Dean

(Encyclopedia)Howells, William Dean, 1837–1920, American novelist, critic, and editor, b. Martins Ferry, Ohio. Both in his own novels and in his critical writing, Howells was a champion of realism in American lit...

folktale

(Encyclopedia)folktale, general term for any of numerous varieties of traditional narrative. The telling of stories appears to be a cultural universal, common to pre-industrial, ancient, and more modern and develop...