(Encyclopedia) Porson, Richard, 1759–1808, English classical scholar, b. Norfolk. A poor boy, he showed such astonishing powers of memory that patrons sent him through Eton and Cambridge. He was…
(Encyclopedia) Rego, José Lins doRego, José Lins dozh&oobreve;zĕˈ lēnz dô rĕˈg&oobreve; [key], 1901–57, Brazilian novelist. His fame rests largely on his semiautobiographical “sugarcane cycle…
(Encyclopedia) folktale, general term for any of numerous varieties of traditional narrative. The telling of stories appears to be a cultural universal, common to pre-industrial, ancient, and more…
(Encyclopedia) Mason, James, 1909–84, British stage and film actor. Mason, trained at Cambridge as an architect, became a leading man in British films in the 1940s and thereafter an international…
directorBorn: 4/1/1953Birthplace: New York City When it came time for sending her only child off to college, Barry Sonnenfeld's mother made her views clear. If he went to—as she put it—“sleep-away…
(Encyclopedia) Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 1836–1907, American author and editor, b. Portsmouth, N.H. His most widely read work was The Story of a Bad Boy (1870), a vigorous narrative based on his own…
(Encyclopedia) Fools, Feast of, burlesque religious festival of the Middle Ages. It occurred during the Christmas and New Year's revels, on or near New Year's Day. In many places a Lord of Misrule…
(Encyclopedia) Wirral, metropolitan borough (1991 est. pop. 322,100), NW England, on the peninsula between the Mersey and Dee estuaries, in the Greater Manchester metropolitan area. Sometimes…
(Encyclopedia) Low, Juliette Gordon, 1860–1927, American founder of the Girl Scouts, b. Savannah, Ga., as Juliette Magill Kinzie Gordon. From a prominent Southern family, she met Robert Baden-Powell…
