Anthony Joseph Drexel

Anthony Joseph Drexel , 1826-93, American banker and philanthropist, b. Philadelphia. He entered (1838) at an early age the well-known banking firm of Drexel and Company, founded by his father, Francis Martin Drexel, an Austrian immigrant. Anthony became a partner, and later under his dominant leadership the firm expanded extensively. Drexel Institute (now Drexel Univ. ), opened in 1892, was the most important of his many philanthropies.

Anthony, Joseph [né Deuster) (1912–93), director and actor. He was born in Milwaukee and educated at the University of Wisconsin and the Pasadena Playhouse before beginning an acting career that saw him in productions by the Federal Theatre Project and on Broadway in the 1950s. Anthony began directing in 1948 and soon established a reputation for being an “actor's director” for his insightful work in character plays, but he also staged comedies and musicals with success. His many New York productions include The Rainmaker (1954), The Most Happy Fella (1954), The Best Man (1960), Mary, Mary (1961), 110 in the Shade (1963), and Finishing Touches (1973).

Burgess, Anthony ( John Anthony Burgess Wilson) (1917–94), novelist, born in Manchester of a Catholic family, and educated at the University of Manchester. His varied early career included some years (1954–60) in the colonial service in Malaya and Borneo. During this time he wrote his first three novels, set in the Far East: Time for a Tiger (1956), The Enemy in the Blanket (1958), and Beds in the East (1959; published together as The Malayan Trilogy in 1972). A Clockwork Orange (1962), an alarming vision of violence, high technology, and authoritarianism, appeared in a film version by Stanley Kubrick in 1971. His comic trilogy about the gross and fitfully inspired poet Enderby (Inside Mr Enderby, 1963, under the pseudonym ‘Joseph Kell’; Enderby Outside, 1968; The Clockwork Testament, 1974) displays a fine flair for pastiche, satiric social comment, and verbal invention. Earthly Powers (1980) is a long and ambitious first-person novel, narrated by a successful octogenarian homosexual writer, Kenneth Toomey, in which real and fictitious characters mingle to produce an international panorama of the 20th cent. Other works include Enderby's Dark Lady (1984), The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985), The Devil's Mode (stories, 1989), and A Dead Man in Deptford (1993), a brilliant recreation of the life of Christopher Marlowe. Two volumes of memoirs, Little Wilson and Big God and You've Had Your Time, appeared in 1987 and 1990.

Burgess also wrote critical works, notably on Joyce; composed orchestral works; written film and television scripts, innumerable reviews (see Homage to Qwertyuiop, 1987), and a biography of Shakespeare (1970).