Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) West, Nathanael, 1903–40, American novelist, whose real name was Nathan Weinstein, b. New York City, grad. Brown Univ., 1924. An innovative, highly original author, West revealed the sterility and g...

(Encyclopedia) Agnew, Spiro Theodore spērˈō [key], 1918–96, 39th Vice President of the United States (1969–73), b. Baltimore. Admitted to the bar in 1949, he entered politics as a Republican and was elected (...

(Encyclopedia) Streisand, Barbra, 1942–, American singer and actress, b. New York City. Streisand first gained a relatively small but select audience singing in New York City cabarets, and she received her first w...

(Encyclopedia) Bernhard, Thomas, 1931–89, Austrian novelist and playwright. A literary descendent of Kafka and Beckett, Bernhard wrote dense, intensely pessimistic and provocative works. Typically, his novels are ...

(Encyclopedia) Porter, Katherine Anne, 1890–1980, American author, b. Indian Creek, Tex., as Callie Russell Porter. Although she published infrequently, she is regarded as a master of the short story. Her first bo...

(Encyclopedia) Rand, Ayn īn [key], 1905–82, American writer, b. St. Petersburg, Russia, as Alissa Rosenbaum. She came to the United States in 1926, became a citizen five years later, and worked for many years as ...

(Encyclopedia) Browne, Sir Thomas, 1605–82, English author and physician, b. London, educated at Oxford and abroad, knighted (1671) by Charles II. His Religio Medici, in which Browne attempted to reconcile science...

(Encyclopedia) Lawrence, T. E. (Thomas Edward Lawrence), 1888–1935, British adventurer, soldier, and scholar, known as Lawrence of Arabia. While a student at Oxford he went on a walking tour of Syria and in 1911 j...

(Encyclopedia) Morrison, Toni, 1931–2019, American writer, b. Lorain, Ohio, as Chloe Ardelia (later Anthony) Wofford; B.A. Howard Univ., 1953, M.F.A. Cornell, 1955. Her fiction is noted for its poetic language, lu...

(Encyclopedia) Gainsborough, Thomas gānzˈbûrˌō [key], 1727–88, English portrait and landscape painter, b. Sudbury. In 1740 he went to London and became the assistant and pupil of the French engraver Hubert Gr...