(Encyclopedia) Smith, Dame Maggie (Dame Margaret Natalie Cross), 1934–, English actress. Smith first appeared on stage in Twelfth Night (1952). With her precise, sometimes rapid-fire, articulation…
(Encyclopedia) Smith, Sydney, 1771–1845, English clergyman, writer, and wit, ordained in the Church of England in 1794. In 1798 he went as a tutor to Edinburgh, where he studied medicine,…
(Encyclopedia) epic, long, exalted narrative poem, usually on a serious subject, centered on a heroic figure. The earliest epics, known as primary, or original, epics, were shaped from the legends of…
(Encyclopedia) Mary I (Mary Tudor), 1516–58, queen of England (1553–58), daughter of Henry VIII and Katharine of Aragón.
During the spread of Protestantism in the reign of her half-brother, Edward…
(Encyclopedia) Pope, Alexander, 1688–1744, English poet. Although his literary reputation declined somewhat during the 19th cent., he is now recognized as the greatest poet of the 18th cent. and the…
(Encyclopedia) Northumberland, John Dudley, duke of, 1502?–1553, English statesman. The son of Edmund Dudley, minister of Henry VII, John was restored to his inheritance in 1512 after his father's…
(Encyclopedia) Langland, William, c.1332–c.1400, putative author of Piers Plowman. He was born probably at Ledbury near the Welsh marshes and may have gone to school at Great Malvern Priory. Although…
(Encyclopedia) Olivier, Laurence Kerr, Baron Olivier of BrightonOlivier, Laurence Kerr, Baron Olivier of Brightonōlĭvˈē-āˌ [key], 1907–89, English actor, director, and producer. He made his stage…
(Encyclopedia) Matilda or Maud, 1102–67, queen of England, daughter of Henry I of England. Henry arranged a marriage for her with Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, and she was sent to Germany, betrothed,…
(Encyclopedia) Westminster Abbey, originally the abbey church of a Benedictine monastery (closed in 1539) in London. One of England's most important Gothic structures, it is also a national shrine.…
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