Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Adams, Maude

(Encyclopedia)Adams, Maude, 1872–1953, American actress, b. Salt Lake City, Utah. Her father's name was Kiskadden, but she used her mother's maiden name. She began acting at an early age and became leading lady t...

Bonheur, Rosa

(Encyclopedia)Bonheur, Rosa bənörˈ [key], 1822–99, French painter, mainly of animals. She was a pupil of her father, Raymond Bonheur. Her paintings were regularly exhibited in the Salon from 1841. Bonheur's in...

Burbidge, Margaret

(Encyclopedia)Burbidge, Margaret, 1925–2020, Anglo-American astronomer, b. England as Eleanor Margaret Peachey. Burbidge; her husband, Geoffrey Burbidge; William Fowler; and Sir Fred Hoyle showed (1956) how heavi...

Blackwell, Antoinette Louisa (Brown)

(Encyclopedia)Blackwell, Antoinette Louisa (Brown), 1825–1921, American Unitarian minister, b. Henrietta, N.Y., grad. Oberlin College, 1847, and Oberlin Theological Seminary, 1850. One of the first women to recei...

monsters and imaginary beasts

(Encyclopedia)monsters and imaginary beasts. The mythologies and legends of ancient and modern cultures teem with an enormous variety of monsters and imaginary beasts. A great number of these are composites of diff...

Jewett, Sarah Orne

(Encyclopedia)Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849–1909, American novelist and short-story writer, b. South Berwick, Maine. Her studies of small-town New England life are perceptive, sympathetic, and gently humorous. After c...

Jezebel

(Encyclopedia)Jezebel jĕzˈəbĕl [key], in the First Book of Kings, Phoenician princess who was the wife of King Ahab and the mother of Ahaziah, Jehoram, and Athaliah. She encouraged worship of Baal, including th...

mermaid

(Encyclopedia)mermaid, in folklore, sea-dwelling creature commonly represented as having the head and body of a woman and a fishtail instead of legs. Belief in mermaids, and in their counterpart, mermen, has existe...

Medusa, in Greek mythology

(Encyclopedia)Medusa mədo͞oˈsə [key], in Greek mythology, most famous of the three monstrous Gorgon sisters. She was once a beautiful woman, but she offended Athena, who changed her hair into snakes and made he...

Aspasia

(Encyclopedia)Aspasia ăspāˈshə, –zhə [key], fl. mid-5th cent. b.c., Athenian courtesan. A woman of great beauty and intelligence, she became the mistress and, according to some poets, adviser of Pericles aft...