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Wotton, William

(Encyclopedia)Wotton, William, 1666–1727, English scholar. He is best known for his Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1694), a defense of contemporary learning written in response to an essay by Sir W...

Wycherley, William

(Encyclopedia)Wycherley, William wĭchˈərlē [key], 1640?–1716, English dramatist, b. near Shrewsbury. His first comedy, Love in a Wood (1671), was a huge success and won him the favor of the duchess of Clevela...

Wyler, William

(Encyclopedia)Wyler, William, 1902–1981, American film director, producer, and writer, b. Mülhausen, Germany (now Mulhouse, France) as Willi Wilder. He came to the United States (1920) at the invitation of Carl ...

Boyce, William

(Encyclopedia)Boyce, William, c.1710–1779, English composer. After studying in London, he became a composer (1736) and later an organist (1758) of the Chapel Royal and Master of the King's Music in 1755. Although...

Sommer, William

(Encyclopedia)Sommer, William, 1867–1949, American painter and lithographer, b. Detroit. He was apprenticed as a lithographer and studied drawing with Julius Melchers in Detroit and drawing and painting in Munich...

Stoughton, William

(Encyclopedia)Stoughton, William stōˈtən [key], 1631–1701, American colonial statesman. He was probably born in England but studied at Harvard (grad. 1650) before attending New College, Oxford (M.A., 1653). At...

Strachey, William

(Encyclopedia)Strachey, William, 1572–1621, English colonial historian; educated at Cambridge. In 1609 he sailed to Virginia with Sir Thomas Gates. A storm wrecked his ship in the Bermudas, and the party remained...

Strickland, William

(Encyclopedia)Strickland, William, 1788–1854, American architect of the classic revival, b. Navesink, New Jersey. He studied under B. H. Latrobe. In his buildings Strickland sought to reconcile the proportions of...

Stubbs, William

(Encyclopedia)Stubbs, William, 1825–1901, English historian, educated at Oxford. Ordained in 1850, he was a professor of modern history at Oxford until in 1884 he was made bishop of Chester. Stubbs's critical stu...

Styron, William

(Encyclopedia)Styron, William, 1925–2006, American novelist, b. Newport News, Va., grad. Duke, 1947. His fiction is often powerful, deeply felt, poetic, and elegiac. He became well known for his novel The Confess...