Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Neilson, William Allan

(Encyclopedia)Neilson, William Allan nēlˈsən [key], 1869–1946, American educator, b. Scotland, M.A. Univ. of Edinburgh, 1891, Ph.D. Harvard, 1898. He taught English in Scotland and Canada and at Bryn Mawr and ...

Holland House

(Encyclopedia)Holland House, residence of the Holland family in Kensington, London, made famous in the first 40 years of the 19th cent. by the hospitality of Henry Fox, 3d Baron Holland, and his wife. Built in 1606...

glee

(Encyclopedia)glee, in music, an unaccompanied song for three or more solo voices in harmony. The word glee [Anglo-Saxon, gligge or gliw=music] has been associated with vocal music from the time of the medieval gle...

Astell, Mary

(Encyclopedia)Astell, Mary ăsˈtəl [key], 1666–1731, English author and feminist. Her Serious Proposal to the Ladies (2 parts, 1694–97) offered a scheme for a women's college, an idea far in advance of the ti...

King Horn

(Encyclopedia)King Horn, probably the earliest English-language romance, written c.1250 and containing about 1,500 lines. It is by an anonymous author and is based on an earlier work in French. Emphasizing action a...

Haywood, Eliza (Fowler)

(Encyclopedia)Haywood, Eliza (Fowler), 1693?–1756, English author. Separated from her husband, she supported herself and her two children by writing plays and novels. Two of her books, Utopia (1725) and The Court...

Sewell, Anna

(Encyclopedia)Sewell, Anna so͞oˈəl [key], 1820–78, English author. Her only work, Black Beauty (1877), the story of a horse, became a children's classic and has gone into many reprints. Her mother, Mary Wright...

Blunden, Edmund Charles

(Encyclopedia)Blunden, Edmund Charles, 1896–1974, English author. Beginning his career as a poet of nature, Blunden became a cosmopolitan teacher and writer. His prose works include Undertones of War (1928), an a...

America, in music

(Encyclopedia)America, in music, a patriotic hymn of the United States. The words (beginning “My country, 'tis of thee”) were written in 1832 by Samuel Francis Smith while he was a theological student in Andove...

Browse by Subject