Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Prime Ministers of Great Britain 1 The modern party system did not evolve until the end of the 18th cent. ...

(Encyclopedia) Orwell, George, pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair, 1903–50, British novelist and essayist, b. Bengal, India. He is best remembered for his scathingly satirical and frighteningly political novels, Animal F...

(Encyclopedia)  Kopit, Arthur, 1937-2021, American playwright, b. New York, New York, as Arthur Lee Koenig, Harvard Univ. (BS, 1959). Kopit’s parents divorced when h...

(Encyclopedia) Kramer, Larry (Lawrence David), 1935-2020 American gay-rights activist and playwright, b. Bridgeport, Ct., Yale Univ. (B.A., 1957). After graduating co...

(Encyclopedia) Sendak, Maurice Bernard, 1928–2012, American writer and illustrator of children's books, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. Largely self-taught, he was widely acclaimed as the 20th-century's most important childrens...

(Encyclopedia) Anglo-Saxons, name given to the Germanic-speaking peoples who settled in England after the decline of Roman rule there. They were first invited by the Celtic King Vortigern, who needed help fighting t...

(Encyclopedia) Redgrave, family of English actors. Sir Michael Redgrave, 1908–85, b. Bristol, Eng., was an actor, director, and writer. After his first professional performance in Counsellor-at-Law (1934), he appe...

(Encyclopedia) vaudeville vôdˈvĭl [key], originally a light song, derived from the drinking and love songs formerly attributed to Olivier Basselin and called Vau, or Vaux, de Vire. Similar to the English music ha...

(Encyclopedia) Williams, Tennessee (Thomas Lanier Williams), 1911–83, American dramatist, b. Columbus, Miss., grad. State Univ. of Iowa, 1938. One of America's foremost 20th-century playwrights and the author of m...