Columbia Encyclopedia

(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...

(Encyclopedia) Przybyszewski, Stanisław stänēsˈläf pshĭbĭshĕfˈskē [key], 1868–1927, Polish novelist, essayist, and dramatist. He studied in Berlin, where his friendship with a socialist led him to prison...

(Encyclopedia) platform tennis, version of lawn tennis played on an elevated wooden or aluminum court that is one fourth the size of a standard court, usually by doubles teams. Unlike lawn tennis, platform tennis al...

(Encyclopedia) Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan Forster), 1879–1970, English author, one of the most important British novelists of the 20th cent. After graduating from Cambridge, Forster lived in Italy and Greece. D...

(Encyclopedia) Himalayas hĭmälˈəyəz, hĭməlāˈəz [key] [Sanskrit,=abode of snow], great Asian mountain system, extending c.1,500 mi (2,410 km) E from the Indus River in Pakistan through India, the Tibet regi...

(Encyclopedia) Murray, Les (Leslie Allan Murray), 1938–2019, Australia's leading poet of the late 20th and early 21st cent., B.A. Univ. of Sydney, 1969. Son of an impoverished dairy farmer, he grew up in New South...

(Encyclopedia) Bowen, Elizabeth bōˈĭn [key], 1899–1973, Anglo-Irish novelist, b. Dublin. In impeccable prose she treated love and frustration through studies of complex psychological relationships. Her novels i...

(Encyclopedia) Cartier-Bresson, Henri äNrēˈ kärtēāˈ-brĕsôNˈ [key], 1908–2004, French photojournalist, b. Chanteloup, near Paris. Cartier-Bresson is renowned for his countless memorable images of 20th-cen...

(Encyclopedia) Carver, Raymond, 1938–88, American short-story writer, b. Clatskanie, Oreg. He was raised in the Pacific Northwest, where he often set his sparely written tales of everyday blue-collar life. His per...

(Encyclopedia) MacIntyre, Alasdair C. ălˈəstər măkˈĭntīrˌ [key], 1929–, American philosopher. He teaches at the Univ. of Notre Dame in Indiana. His major contributions have come in ethics. In his highly i...