Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Mercator, Gerardus gārˈhärt krāˈmər [key], 1512–94, Flemish geographer, mathematician, and cartographer. He studied in Louvain, where he had a geographical establishment (1534). From 1537 to 1...

(Encyclopedia) Styron, William, 1925–2006, American novelist, b. Newport News, Va., grad. Duke, 1947. His fiction is often powerful, deeply felt, poetic, and elegiac. He became well known for his novel The Confess...

(Encyclopedia) symbolists, in literature, a school originating in France toward the end of the 19th cent. in reaction to the naturalism and realism of the period. Designed to convey impressions by suggestion rather ...

(Encyclopedia) gnat, common name for any one of a number of small, fragile-looking two-winged flies of the suborder Nematocera, order Diptera, which includes the families Tipulidae (crane flies), Bibionidae (hairfli...

(Encyclopedia) May, Philip William (Phil May), 1864–1903, English pen-and-ink caricaturist, b. Leeds. After living in poverty for many years, he made numerous drawings for the St. Stephen's Review. Phil May's Wint...

(Encyclopedia) Clapham Sect, group of English social reformers, active c.1790–1830, so named because their activities centered on the home in Clapham, London, of Henry Thornton and William Wilberforce. Most of the...

(Encyclopedia) Hopkins, Esek, 1718–1802, American Revolutionary naval hero, b. Scituate, R.I.; brother of Stephen Hopkins. He commanded a privateer in the French and Indian War, and in Dec., 1775, he was appointed...

(Encyclopedia) Arguedas, Alcides älsēˈᵺās ärgāˈᵺäs [key], 1879–1946, Bolivian writer and diplomat. His essays and novels, which have social and moralizing tendencies, are a reaction against the romanti...

(Encyclopedia) Volk, Leonard Wells, 1828–95, American sculptor, b. Wellstown (now Wells), N.Y. In 1848 he went to St. Louis, where he studied drawing and worked at funerary sculpture. With the aid of Stephen A. Do...

(Encyclopedia) Vác vīˈtsən [key], town (1991 est. pop. 33,858), N central Hungary, on the Danube River. A commercial center producing textiles, footwear, cement, and tools, it is also a favorite summer resort of...