Columbia Encyclopedia

(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) Manning, Henry Edward, 1808–92, English churchman, cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. Ordained a Catholic priest, Manning became a celebrated confessor, an ardent advocate of prison reform, a...

(Encyclopedia) Palladio, Andrea ändrĕˈä päl-läˈdēō [key], 1508–80, Italian architect of the Renaissance. Originally a stonemason, he was trained as an architect in Vicenza, and later in Rome he examined t...

(Encyclopedia) Providence, city (1990 pop. 160,728), state capital and seat of Providence co., NE R.I., a port at the head of Providence Bay; founded by Roger Williams 1636, inc. as a city 1832. The largest city in ...

(Encyclopedia) King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929–68, American clergyman and civil-rights leader, b. Atlanta, Ga., grad. Morehouse College (B.A., 1948), Crozer Theological Seminary (B.D., 1951), Boston Univ. (Ph.D., 1...

(Encyclopedia) Open Door, maintenance in a certain territory of equal commercial and industrial rights for the nationals of all countries. As a specific policy, it was first advanced by the United States, but it was...

(Encyclopedia) Indian Mutiny, 1857–58, revolt that began with Indian soldiers in the Bengal army of the British East India Company but developed into a widespread uprising against British rule in India. It is also...

(Encyclopedia) folktale, general term for any of numerous varieties of traditional narrative. The telling of stories appears to be a cultural universal, common to pre-industrial, ancient, and more modern and develop...

(Encyclopedia) Harlem Renaissance, term used to describe a flowering of African-American literature and art in the 1920s, mainly in the Harlem district of New York City. During the mass migration of African American...

(Encyclopedia) semantics [Gr.,=significant] in general, the study of the relationship between words and meanings. The empirical study of word meanings and sentence meanings in existing languages is a branch of lingu...