Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Ross, Robert, 1766–1814, British general. He served against the French in the Netherlands, in Egypt, and in the Peninsular War. In the War of 1812 he defeated a U.S. force at Bladensburg, and on the...

(Encyclopedia) Barclay, Robert, 1648–90, Scottish apologist for the Society of Friends (Quakers). He wrote many controversial works but is best known for his great treatise An Apology for the True Christian Divini...

(Encyclopedia) Tolkien, J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel Tolkien) tälˈkēn, tōlˈ– [key], 1892–1973, British novelist, b. South Africa. A fantasy writer and Oxford don, Tolkien wrote The Hobbit (1937), adapted fro...

(Encyclopedia) Cockerell, Charles Robert kŏkˈərəl [key], 1788–1863, English architect, archaeologist, and writer. While excavating at Bassae, Aegina, and other sites in Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor, he studie...

(Encyclopedia) Surtees, Robert Smith sûrˈtēz [key], 1803–64, English novelist. He created John Jorrocks, the sporting grocer, who appears in Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities (1838), a series of humorous sketches ...

(Encyclopedia) Ripley, Robert LeRoy, 1890–1949, American cartoonist, b. Santa Rosa, Calif., as Leroy Robert Ripley. The creator of the Believe It or Not! newspaper cartoon, Ripley began his career at 16 as a sport...

(Encyclopedia) Ker, Robert, earl of Somerset: see Somerset, Robert Carr, earl of. ...

(Encyclopedia) Goldwater, Robert, 1907–73, American art historian, b. New York City. Goldwater taught at Queens College, N.Y., from 1934 to 1957, when he was appointed professor of fine arts at New York Univ. The ...

(Encyclopedia) Venturi, Robert, 1925–2018, American architect and architectural theorist, b. Philadelphia, grad. Princeton (B.A., 1947; M.F.A., 1950). An important and highly influential theorist, Venturi inveighe...