Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Greene, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Greene, Robert, 1558?–1592, English author. His short romances, written in the manner of Lyly's Euphues, include Pandosto (1588), from which Shakespeare drew the plot for A Winter's Tale, and Menaph...

Grosseteste, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Grosseteste, Robert grōsˈtĕst [key], c.1175–1253, English prelate. Educated at Oxford and probably also at Paris, he became one of the most learned men of his time. He taught at Oxford and later,...

Graham, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Graham, Robert, later Robert Cunninghame Graham, c.1735–1797, Scottish poet and politician. He is best known for the lyric “If Doughty Deeds My Lady Please.” He inherited sizable estates and ser...

Goldwater, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Goldwater, Robert, 1907–73, American art historian, b. New York City. Goldwater taught at Queens College, N.Y., from 1934 to 1957, when he was appointed professor of fine arts at New York Univ. The ...

Granjon, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Granjon, Robert grănˈjən, Fr. rōbĕrˈ gräNzhôNˈ [key], fl. 1545–88, French designer of type and printer. He began his work in Paris and afterward worked in Lyons, Antwerp, and Rome. The type...

Fortune, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Fortune, Robert, 1813–80, British botanist. He traveled in Asia for the Royal Horticultural Society and later for the East India Company and brought back to England a number of chrysanthemums, the J...

Frost, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Frost, Robert, 1874–1963, American poet, b. San Francisco. Perhaps the most popular and beloved of 20th-century American poets, Frost wrote of the character, people, and landscape of New England in ...

Fulton, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Fulton, Robert, 1765–1815, American inventor, engineer, and painter, b. near Lancaster, Pa. He was a man remarkable for his many talents and his mechanical genius. An expert gunsmith at the time of ...

Garnier, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Garnier, Robert gärnyāˈ [key], 1534?–1590, French dramatic poet. He wrote mainly closet dramas in the classical manner of Seneca. Les Juives [the Jewish women] (1583), based on the Bible, is per...

FitzRoy, Robert

(Encyclopedia)FitzRoy, Robert, 1805–65, British naval officer, meteorologist, and hydrologist. Given (1829) temporary command of the HMS Beagle, he completed a survey of the coasts of Patagonia and Tierra del Fue...