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Bedouin

(Encyclopedia)Bedouin bĕdˈo͞oĭn [key] [Arab.,=desert dwellers], primarily nomad Arab peoples of the Middle East, where they form about 10% of the population. They are of the same Semitic stock as their sedentar...

Webb, Philip Speakman

(Encyclopedia)Webb, Philip Speakman, 1831–1915, English architect. His influence, together with that of R. N. Shaw and W. E. Nesfield, established after the mid-19th cent. a revival of residential architecture ba...

Malory, Sir Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Malory, Sir Thomas mălˈərē [key], d. 1471, English author of Morte d'Arthur. It is almost certain that he was Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revell, Warwickshire. Knighted in 1442, he served in the ...

Lowell, James Russell

(Encyclopedia)Lowell, James Russell, 1819–91, American poet, critic, and editor, b. Cambridge, Mass. He was influential in revitalizing the intellectual life of New England in the mid-19th cent. Educated at Harva...

Dryden, John

(Encyclopedia)Dryden, John, 1631–1700, English poet, dramatist, and critic, b. Northamptonshire, grad. Cambridge, 1654. He went to London about 1657 and first came to public notice with his Heroic Stanzas (1659),...

Shostakovich, Dmitri

(Encyclopedia)Shostakovich, Dmitri dyĭmēˈtrē shŏstŏkôˈvĭch [key], 1906–75, Russian composer, b. St. Petersburg. Shostakovich studied at the Leningrad Conservatory (1919–25). The early success of his Fi...

Hare, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Hare, Robert, 1781–1858, American chemist, b. Philadelphia. He was professor of chemistry (1819–47) at the medical college of the Univ. of Pennsylvania. Hare made important contributions to early ...

More, Sir Thomas

(Encyclopedia)More, Sir Thomas (Saint Thomas More), 1478–1535, English statesman and author of Utopia, celebrated as a martyr in the Roman Catholic Church. He received a Latin education in the household of Cardin...

sharecropping

(Encyclopedia)sharecropping, an agricultural system in which a landowner allows a tenant to use their land in return for a share of the crop produced. In the United S...

Hoffmann, Josef

(Encyclopedia)Hoffmann, Josef, 1870–1956, Austrian architect. A student of Otto Wagner, he was a leader of Austrian decoration in the first three decades of the 20th cent. His sophisticated compositions, based on...

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