Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Harris, Patricia Roberts, 1924–85, U.S. government official, b. Mattoon, Ill. A lawyer who was active in the Democratic party, she was a law professor and dean at Howard Univ. during the 1960s and b...

(Encyclopedia) epitaph, strictly, an inscription on a tomb; by extension, a statement, usually in verse, commemorating the dead. The earliest such inscriptions are those found on Egyptian sarcophagi. In England epit...

(Encyclopedia) Dance Theatre of Harlem, the first black classical ballet company. The group was founded in Harlem, New York City, by Arthur Mitchell, then of the New York City Ballet, the first African-American prin...

(Encyclopedia) Simon, Neil (Marvin Neil Simon), 1927–2018, American playwright, b. the Bronx, New York City. His plays, nearly all of them popular with audiences, if not always with critics, are comedies treating ...

(Encyclopedia) Isis īˈsĭs [key], nature goddess whose worship, originating in ancient Egypt, gradually extended throughout the lands of the Mediterranean world during the Hellenistic period and became one of the ...

(Encyclopedia) Leadville lĕdˈvĭl [key], mining city (1990 pop. 2,629), alt. c.10,200 ft (3,110 m), seat of Lake co., central Colo., near the headwaters of the Arkansas River, in the Rocky Mts.; inc. 1878. Some mi...

(Encyclopedia) Onetti, Juan Carlos, 1909–94, Uruguayan novelist and short story writer, b. Montevideo. One of the great 20th-century Latin American novelists, Onetti wrote of the dissipation of modern urban societ...

(Encyclopedia) Mason, Bobbie Ann, 1940–, American regional author, b. Mayfield, Ky., grad. Univ. of Kentucky (B.A., 1962), State Univ. of New York, Binghamton (M.A., 1966), Univ. of Connecticut (Ph.D., 1972). Her ...

(Encyclopedia) Jackson, Shirley, 1916–65, American writer, b. San Francisco. She is best known for her stories and novels of horror and the occult, rendered more terrifying because they are set against realistic, ...

(Encyclopedia) Woden ōˈdĭn [key], in Germanic religion and mythology, the supreme god. His cult, although widespread among the Germanic tribes, was sometimes subordinated to that of his son Thor. With his brother...