|
Ring Lardner
Ring Lardner (Ringgold Wilmer Lardner), 1885-1933, American humorist and short-story writer, b. Niles, Mich. He was a sports reporter in Chicago, St. Louis, and Boston from 1907 to 1919. His first collection of short stories, You Know Me, Al (1916) revealed his talent for the racy sports idiom he...
Read more
|
|
blowgun
blowgun hollow tube from which a dart or an arrow is blown by a person's breath. The arrow was usually tipped with a poison, such as curare , which would stun or kill the struck prey. Blowguns were widely used by prehistoric peoples. In modern times they are still employed in SE Asia and by some i...
Read more
|
|
Dumas Malone
Dumas Malone , 1892-1986, American historian and editor, b. Coldwater, Miss. He received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1923 and was an instructor of history at Yale (1919-23) and associate professor (1923-26) and professor (1926-29) at the Univ. of Virginia. He was an editor of the Dictionary of American ...
Read more
|
|
Count Folke Bernadotte
Count Folke Bernadotte , 1895-1948, Swedish internationalist; nephew of King Gustavus V. He was active in the Swedish Red Cross and became its president in 1946. Early in 1945 he arranged the evacuation of Danish and Norwegian prisoners from German concentration camps and conveyed a peace offer from...
Read more
|
|
Perry Miller
Perry Miller 1905-63, U.S. historian, b. Chicago. He received his Ph.D. from the Univ. of Chicago in 1931 and taught at Harvard from 1931 until his death. A towering figure in the field of American intellectual history, Miller wrote extensively, especially about colonial New England. In The New En...
Read more
|
|
Ogden Nash
Ogden Nash 1902-71, American poet, b. Rye, N.Y., studied at Harvard. He was popular for a wide assortment of witty and immensely quotable doggerel verses, ranging from urbane satire to absurdity in their subject and rhyme. For several decades his work appeared regularly in The New Yorker magazine...
Read more
|
|
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker (Dorothy Rothschild Parker), 1893-1967, American short-story and verse writer, b. West End, N.J. While serving as drama critic for Vanity Fair (1916-17) and book critic for The New Yorker (1927), she gained an almost legendary reputation for her sardonic wit. Her first volume of ...
Read more
|
|
William Beckford
William Beckford 1760-1844, English author. A wealthy dilettante, Beckford had a great desire to ascend to the nobility. Unfortunately his erratic and strange behavior often worked against his ambitions. About 1796 he built in Wiltshire an extravagant Gothic castle, Fonthill Abbey, where he lived i...
Read more
|
|
Alfred Kazin
Alfred Kazin , 1915-98, American critic, b. New York City, grad. College of the City of New York (B.S., 1935) and Columbia (M.A., 1938). Kazin was one of the outstanding literary critics of his time. His first book, the influential and pioneering On Native Grounds (1942), is a critical study of Am...
Read more
|
|
S. N. Behrman
S. N. Behrman (Samuel Nathaniel Behrman) , 1893-1973, American dramatist, b. Worcester, Mass., grad. Harvard 1916. His sophisticated comedies often attempt to probe the consciences of the wealthy and privileged. They include The Second Man (1927), Rain from Heaven (1934), No Time for Comedy ...
Read more
|