Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) pragmatism prăgˈmətĭzəm [key], method of philosophy in which the truth of a proposition is measured by its correspondence with experimental results and by its practical outcome. Thought is consid...

(Encyclopedia) Douglass, Frederick dŭgˈləs [key], c.1818–1895, American abolitionist, b. near Easton, Md. as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. The son of a black slave, Harriet Bailey, and a white father, m...

(Encyclopedia) Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de sərvănˈtēz, Span. mēgĕlˈ dā thĕrvänˈtās säˌävāᵺrä [key], 1547–1616, Spanish novelist, dramatist, and poet, author of Don Quixote de la Mancha, b. Alc...

(Encyclopedia) Proust, Marcel pro͞ost [key], 1871–1922, French novelist, b. Paris. He is one of the great literary figures of the modern age. Born to wealthy bourgeois parents, he suffered delicate health as a c...

(Encyclopedia) Updike, John, 1932–2009, American author, one of the nation's most distinguished 20th-century men of letters, b. Shillington, Pa., grad. Harvard, 1954. In his many novels and stories, written in a w...

(Encyclopedia) Edward VI, 1537–53, king of England (1547–53), son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour. Edward succeeded his father to the throne at the age of nine. Henry had made arrangements for a council of regent...

(Encyclopedia) Pound, Ezra Loomis, 1885–1972, American poet, critic, and translator, b. Hailey, Idaho, grad. Hamilton College, 1905, M.A. Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1906. An extremely important influence in the shapin...

(Encyclopedia) Dylan, Bob dĭlˈən [key], 1941–, American singer and composer, b. Duluth, Minn., as Robert Zimmerman. Dylan learned guitar at the age of 10 and autoharp and harmonica at 15. After a rebellious you...

(Encyclopedia) Hooker, Richard, 1554?–1600, English theologian and clergyman of the Church of England. He studied and lectured at Oxford and preached at Drayton-Beauchamp, Buckinghamshire; at the Temple Church, Lo...

(Encyclopedia) miniature painting [Ital.,=artwork, especially manuscript initial letters, done with the red lead pigment minium; the word originally had no implication as to size]. In a general sense the term denote...