Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) melodrama [Gr.,=song-drama], originally a spoken text with musical background, as in Greek drama. The form was popular in the 18th cent., when its composers included Georg Benda, J. J. Rousseau, and W...

(Encyclopedia) Clare, John, 1793–1864, English poet. A romantic poet who wrote shortly after the vogue for such verse, he had a profound and singular gift for capturing nature in exquisitely specific detail. The s...

(Encyclopedia) Dryden, John, 1631–1700, English poet, dramatist, and critic, b. Northamptonshire, grad. Cambridge, 1654. He went to London about 1657 and first came to public notice with his Heroic Stanzas (1659),...

(Encyclopedia) Rutherford, Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron, 1871–1937, British physicist, b. New Zealand. Rutherford left New Zealand in 1895, having earned three degrees from the Univ. of New Zealand but having fail...

(Encyclopedia) Pinkerton, Allan, 1819–84, American detective, founder of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, b. Glasgow, Scotland. A cooper by trade, he emigrated to the United States in 1842 and opened in We...

(Encyclopedia) Adams, John, 1735–1826, 2d President of the United States (1797–1801), b. Quincy (then in Braintree), Mass., grad. Harvard, 1755. John Adams and his wife, Abigail Adams, founded one of the most di...

(Encyclopedia) Audubon, John James ôˈdəbŏn [key], 1785–1851, American ornithologist, b. Les Cayes, Santo Domingo (now Haiti). The illegitimate son of a French sea captain and plantation owner and a Creole cham...

(Encyclopedia) Austen, Jane ôˈstən [key], 1775–1817, English novelist. The daughter of a clergyman, she spent the first 25 years of her life at “Steventon,” her father's Hampshire vicarage. Here her first n...

(Encyclopedia) filibuster, term used to designate obstructionist tactics in legislative assemblies. It has particular reference to the U.S. Senate, where the tradition of unlimited debate is very strong. It was not ...

(Encyclopedia) Tweed, William Marcy, 1823–78, American politician and Tammany leader, b. New York City. A bookkeeper, he became (1848) a volunteer fireman and as a result acquired influence in his ward. He was an ...