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Robert Beverley
Robert Beverley , 1673-1722, Virginia colonial historian, author of The History and Present State of Virginia (1705). A substantial planter and colonial official, he wrote his book after finding numerous errors in the manuscript of a book on Virginia written by an Englishman. Vigorous, honest, and...
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Jean Collins Kerr
Jean Collins Kerr 1923-2003, American comic author and playwright, b. Scranton, Pa., wife of Walter Kerr . Kerr had a knack for finding wry humor in the worlds of marriage, suburbia, and show business. Her novel Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1957) was made into a movie (1960) and a television se...
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Parsifal
Parsifal , figure of Arthurian legend also known as Sir Percivale, who is in turn a later form of a hero of Celtic myth. The name originally occurs as Pryderi, an alternative name of Gwry in Pwyll Prince of Dyved, a tale in the Mabinogion . Gwry is the original of Gawain, and in the later Perci...
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James Boswell
James Boswell 1740-95, Scottish author, b. Edinburgh; son of a distinguished judge. At his father's insistence the young Boswell reluctantly studied law. Admitted to the bar in 1766, he practiced throughout his life, but his true interest was in a literary career and in associating with the great m...
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J. K. Rowling
J. K. Rowling (Joanne Kathleen Rowling) , 1965-, English author known for her popular children's books, b. Chipping Sodbury, grad. Exeter Univ. (1986). While unemployed she completed her first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1996), a vivid tale of a young wizard and his friends, ...
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Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler 1835-1902, English author. He was the son and grandson of eminent clergymen. In 1859, refusing to be ordained, he went to New Zealand, where he established a sheep farm and in a few years made a modest fortune. He returned to England in 1864 and devoted himself to a variety of interes...
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William Howard Gass
William Howard Gass 1924-, American author, b. Fargo, N.Dak., grad. Kenyon College, 1947; Ph.D. Cornell, 1954. In 1969 he became a professor of philosophy at Washington Univ., St. Louis. Rejecting traditional realism and interested in experimenting with the novel's form, he has been compared to She...
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Ibn al-Haytham
Ibn al-Haytham or Alhazen , 965-c.1040, Arab mathematician. Ibn al-Haytham was born in Basra, Persia, but made his career in Cairo, where he supported himself copying scientific manuscripts. Among his original works, only those on optics, astronomy, and mathematics survive. His Optics, which r...
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family
family a basic unit of social structure, the exact definition of which can vary greatly from time to time and from culture to culture. How a society defines family as a primary group, and the functions it asks families to perform, are by no means constant. There has been much recent discussion of t...
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Praxiteles
Praxiteles , fl. c.370-c.330 BC, famous Attic sculptor, probably the son of Cephisodotus . His Hermes with the Infant Dionysus, found in the Heraeum, Olympia, in 1877, is the only example of an undisputed extant original by any of the greatest ancient masters. It was found in the same place where...
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