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Etah

(Encyclopedia)Etah ēˈtə [key], abandoned village, NW Greenland, on Smith Sound, opposite Ellesmere Island. The Eskimo tribe discovered there by John Ross in 1818 is known as the Polar Eskimo and was studied by R...

Baker, Newton Diehl

(Encyclopedia)Baker, Newton Diehl, 1871–1937, U.S. Secretary of War (1916–21), b. Martinsburg, W.Va. He practiced law and politics in Cleveland as a protégé of Tom L. Johnson. As city solicitor (1902–12) he...

Puttenham, George

(Encyclopedia)Puttenham, George pŭtˈənəm [key], d. 1590, English author. The Arte of English Poesie (1589), generally considered the best treatise on English versification of its time, has been attributed to hi...

Beowulf

(Encyclopedia)Beowulf bāˈəwo͝olf [key], oldest English epic, probably composed in the early 8th cent. by an Anglian bard in the vicinity of Northumbria. It survives in only one manuscript, written c.a.d. 1000 b...

Barmakids

(Encyclopedia)Barmakids bärˈməsīdzˌ [key], Persian-descended religious family from Khorasan. They served as viziers to the Abbasid caliphs in the 8th cent. Khalid ibn Barmak, d. 782?, supported the revolution ...

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 ...

De Mille, Cecil B.

(Encyclopedia)De Mille, Cecil B. (Cecil Blount De Mille), 1881–1959, American movie director and producer, b. Ashfield, Mass. In 1914, together with Samuel Goldwyn, he made the first feature-length film in Hollyw...

Coetzee, J. M.

(Encyclopedia)Coetzee, J. M. (John Maxwell Coetzee) köˈtsē [key], 1940–, South African novelist, b. John Michael Coetzee. Educated at the Univ. of Cape Town (M.A. 1963) and the Univ. of Texas (Ph.D. 1969), he ...

Galbraith, John Kenneth

(Encyclopedia)Galbraith, John Kenneth gălˈbrāth [key], 1908–2006, American economist and public official, b. Ontario, Canada, grad. Univ. of Toronto (B.S., 1931), Univ. of California, Berkeley (M.S., 1933; Ph....

Baldwin, James

(Encyclopedia)Baldwin, James, 1924–87, American author, b. New York City. He spent an impoverished boyhood in Harlem, became a Pentecostal preacher at 14, and left the church three years later. He moved to Paris ...