Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

296 results found

Mariamne

(Encyclopedia)Mariamne mārēămˈnē [key]. 1 Second of Herod the Great's 10 wives. She was a descendant of the Maccabees. Herod loved her greatly, but he had her murdered after she was falsely accused by her sist...

Oviedo

(Encyclopedia)Oviedo ōvyāˈᵺō [key], city (1990 pop. 194,637), capital of Asturias and of the coextensive Oviedo prov., NW Spain, near the mining district of the Cantabrian Mts. Oviedo has long been one of the...

Fra Diavolo

(Encyclopedia)Fra Diavolo frä dēäˈvōlō [key] [Ital.,=friar devil], 1771–1806, Italian bandit and soldier, whose real name was Michele Pezza. He entered the service of the king of Naples in 1798 and with Car...

Webb, Mary (Meredith)

(Encyclopedia)Webb, Mary (Meredith), 1881–1927, English novelist. Her native Shropshire is the scene of all her novels, which are somber, passionate, and infused with an intense feeling for the countryside. Altho...

Senancour, Étienne Pivert de

(Encyclopedia)Senancour, Étienne Pivert de ātyĕnˈ pēvĕrˈ də sənäNco͞orˈ [key], 1770–1846, French writer. He is known principally for his autobiographical epistolary novel Obermann (1804, tr. 1903). Th...

libretto

(Encyclopedia)libretto ləbrĕtˈō [key] [Ital.,=little book], the text of an opera or an oratorio. Although a play usually emphasizes an integrated plot, a libretto is most often a loose plot connecting a series ...

Dunmore, John Murray, 4th earl of

(Encyclopedia)Dunmore, John Murray, 4th earl of, 1732–1809, British colonial governor of Virginia, a Scottish peer. Appointed governor of New York in 1770, he remained there for about 11 months before being trans...

Beach, Moses Yale

(Encyclopedia)Beach, Moses Yale, 1800–1868, American journalist, b. Wallingford, Conn. As a young man he invented a rag-cutting machine and a gunpowder engine. In 1838 he bought the New York Sun from his brother-...

Friml, Rudolf

(Encyclopedia)Friml, Rudolf (Charles Rudolf Friml) frĭmˈəl [key], 1879–1972, American composer, b. Prague. Friml lived in the United States after 1906. The best-known of his 33 light operas are The Firefly (19...

Browse by Subject