Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

282 results found

Oldfield, Anne

(Encyclopedia)Oldfield, Anne, 1683–1730, English actress. The successor of Mrs. Bracegirdle, she first won acclaim in 1704 for her brilliant portrayal of Lady Modish in Colley Cibber's Careless Husband. She had a...

Sassoon, Siegfried

(Encyclopedia)Sassoon, Siegfried, 1886–1967, English poet and novelist. A heroic and decorated officer in World War I, he nonetheless expressed his conviction of the brutality and waste of war in grim, forceful, ...

Lathrop, Julia Clifford

(Encyclopedia)Lathrop, Julia Clifford, 1858–1932, American social worker and administrator, b. Rockford, Ill., grad. Vassar, 1880. Associated with Jane Addams at Hull House in Chicago, she was active in civic wor...

Dunstan, Saint

(Encyclopedia)Dunstan, Saint dŭnsˈtən [key], c.910–88, English monk, archbishop of Canterbury (960–88), b. near Glastonbury. He lived as a monk until called (940) to court by King Edmund of Wessex. He became...

Leavis, Q. D.

(Encyclopedia)Leavis, Q. D. (Queenie Dorothy Leavis), 1906–81, British literary critic; wife of F. R. Leavis. After studying at Cambridge, she wrote Fiction and the Reading Public (1932), which analyzed the marke...

Boner, Ulrich

(Encyclopedia)Boner or Bonerius, Ulrich o͝olˈrĭkh bōˈnər, bōnērˈēəs [key], fl. 14th cent., Swiss fabulist, a Dominican monk. His Edelstein (c.1345), a collection of 100 moralizing beast fables, was one o...

Wittekind, Saxon historian

(Encyclopedia)Wittekind, Widukind, or Wettekind wĭˈtəkənd, wĭˈdo͞okĭnd, wĕˈtə– [key], c.925–c.1004, Saxon historian, a monk, frequently called Wittekind of Corvey. He wrote the Res gestae Saxonicae,...

Gothic romance

(Encyclopedia)Gothic romance, type of novel that flourished in the late 18th and early 19th cent. in England. Gothic romances were mysteries, often involving the supernatural and heavily tinged with horror, and the...

Benedict Biscop

(Encyclopedia)Benedict Biscop bĭsˈkəp [key], c.628–690, English monk. He founded the monasteries of Wearmouth (at Sunderland) and Jarrow, and he was abbot of St. Peter's, Canterbury. Bede was his pupil. ...

Czuczor, Gergely

(Encyclopedia)Czuczor, Gergely gĕrˈgĕlĭ tso͝oˈtsôr [key], 1800–1866, Hungarian philologist and poet, a Benedictine monk. With John Fogarasi he compiled a Hungarian dictionary (completed 1861). He also wrot...

Browse by Subject