Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) West Chicago, city (1990 pop. 14,796), Du Page co., NE Ill.; inc. 1906. Mostly residential, the city has food-processing plants and produces horticultural products, specialty tapes, and plastics. ...

(Encyclopedia) Wordsworth, William, 1770–1850, English poet, b. Cockermouth, Cumberland. One of the great English poets, he was a leader of the romantic movement in England. Wordsworth's personality and poetry ...

(Encyclopedia) Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns Eliot), 1888–1965, American-British poet and critic, b. St. Louis, Mo. One of the most distinguished literary figures of the 20th cent., T. S. Eliot won the 1948 Nobel P...

(Encyclopedia) slavery, historicially, an institution based on a relationship of dominance and submission, whereby one person owns another and can exact from that person labor or other services. Slavery has been fou...

(Encyclopedia) Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan lĕˈ fənyo͞o [key], 1814–73, Irish author. He spent his early career as a journalist. In 1863, he began producing a series of stories noted for their reflections of Irish...

(Encyclopedia) Bracton, Henry de, d. 1268, English writer on law. He was the author of De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae [on the laws and customs of England], a broad, philosophic treatise that is often called t...

(Encyclopedia) Cromwell, Richard, 1626–1712, lord protector of England; third son of Oliver Cromwell. He was the eldest surviving son at the death of his father (Sept. 3, 1658), who had nominated him as his succes...

(Encyclopedia) Cynewulf kĭnˈəwo͝olfˌ, ko͝onˈ– [key], fl. early 9th cent.?, Old English religious poet of Northumbria or Mercia. Four poems have been ascribed to him on the evidence of his signatures in rune...

(Encyclopedia) Caldwell, Erskine kôldˈwəl [key], 1903–87, American author, b. White Oak, Ga. His realistic and earthy novels of the rural South include Tobacco Road (1933), God's Little Acre (1933), This Very E...

(Encyclopedia) Berenice, b. c.a.d. 28, Jewish princess; daughter of Herod Agrippa I (see under Herod). A very beautiful woman, she was often involved in intrigue. After her first husband died, she was married to her...