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Cobb, Lee J.

(Encyclopedia)Cobb, Lee J., 1911–76, American actor, b. New York City. He first performed with the Pasadena (Calif.) Playhouse in 1929 and made his Broadway debut in Crime and Punishment (1935). Cobb created the ...

Scriblerus Club

(Encyclopedia)Scriblerus Club, English literary group formed about 1713 to satirize “all the false tastes in learning.” Among its chief members were Arbuthnot, Gay, Thomas Parnell, Pope, and Swift. Meetings of ...

Dench, Dame Judi

(Encyclopedia)Dench, Dame Judi jo͞oˈdē dĕnch [key], 1934–, British actress, b. York, England, as Judith Olivia Dench. She studied at the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art, London, made her de...

Stevens, Thaddeus

(Encyclopedia)Stevens, Thaddeus, 1792–1868, U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania (1849–53, 1859–68), b. Danville, Vt. He taught in an academy at York, Pa., studied law, and was admitted to the bar in Marylan...

Harrison, Lou Silver

(Encyclopedia)Harrison, Lou Silver, 1917–2003, American composer, b. Portland, Oreg. He studied composition in California with Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg. His early work stresses percussion while combinin...

Allende, Isabel

(Encyclopedia)Allende, Isabel, 1942–, Chilean novelist. Since the 1973 coup in which her cousin, President Salvador Allende Gossens, died, Isabel Allende, who is among the most notable contemporary Chilean writer...

Trappists

(Encyclopedia)Trappists, popular name for an order of Roman Catholic monks, officially (since 1892) the Reformed Cistercians or Cistercians of the Stricter Observance. They perpetuate the reform begun at La Trappe,...

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

(Encyclopedia)Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804–64, American novelist and short-story writer, b. Salem, Mass., one of the great masters of American fiction. His novels and tales are penetrating explorations of moral and...

United Mine Workers of America

(Encyclopedia)United Mine Workers of America (UMW), international labor union formed (1890) by the amalgamation of the National Progressive Union (organized 1888) and the mine locals under the Knights of Labor. It ...

Merrill, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Merrill, Robert, 1917–2004, American baritone, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., as Moishe Miller. In 1945 he won the Metropolitan Opera's Auditions of the Air and in the same year made his debut as Germont in Ver...