Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Mucha, Alphonse älfôNsˈ mo͝okhˈä [key], 1860–1939, Czech artist. Mucha's art nouveau style, characterized by twisting, swirling flower and hair motifs, set the style for poster art for a gener...

(Encyclopedia) Pynchon, Thomas pĭnˈchən [key], 1937–, American novelist, b. Glen Cove, N.Y., grad. Cornell, 1958. Pynchon is noted for his amazingly fertile imagination, his wild sense of humor, and the teeming...

(Encyclopedia) Reed, Walter, 1851–1902, American army surgeon, b. Gloucester co., Va. In 1900 he was sent to Havana as head of an army commission to investigate an outbreak of yellow fever among American soldiers....

(Encyclopedia) Marley, Bob (Robert Nesta Marley), 1945–81, Jamaican reggae singer, songwriter, and guitarist. As a member of the Wailers, a reggae band that included...

(Encyclopedia) Westcott, Brooke Foss, 1825–1901, English prelate and scholar. From 1870 to 1890 he was regius professor of divinity at Cambridge. With F. J. A. Hort, he published The New Testament in the Original ...

(Encyclopedia) Lindsay, Vachel (Nicholas Vachel Lindsay) lĭnˈzē [key], 1879–1931, American poet, b. Springfield, Ill., studied at Hiram College, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the New York School of Art. Li...

(Encyclopedia) Ward, Artemus, pseud. of Charles Farrar Browne, 1834–67, American humorist, b. Waterford, Maine. As a reporter on the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he began in 1858 a series of “Artemus Ward's Letters�...

(Encyclopedia) Mycenae mīsēˈnē [key], ancient city of Greece, in Argolis. In historical times it had little importance and was usually dependent on Argos. Its significance is in its remote past as a center of My...

(Encyclopedia) La Fontaine, Jean de zhäN də [key], 1621–95, French poet, whose celebrated fables place him among the masters of world literature. He was born at Château-Thierry to a bourgeois family. A restless...

(Encyclopedia) unidentified flying object or UFO, an object or light reportedly seen in the sky whose appearance, trajectory, and general dynamic and luminescent behavior do not readily suggest a logical, convention...