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Steele, Wilbur Daniel

(Encyclopedia)Steele, Wilbur Daniel, 1886–1970, American author, b. Greensboro, N.C., grad. Univ. of Denver, 1907. He studied art in Boston, Paris, and New York City. He was particularly noted for his short stori...

Prokopovich, Feofan

(Encyclopedia)Prokopovich, Feofan fāəfänˈ prəkəpôˈvĭch [key], 1681–1736, Russian churchman. He was appointed bishop by Czar Peter I to carry out his ecclesiastic reforms and wrote Spiritual Regulation (1...

Ritter, Karl

(Encyclopedia)Ritter, Karl, 1779–1859, German geographer, a founder of modern human geography. He was a professor of geography at the Univ. of Berlin from 1820. He helped define the scope of geography and its rel...

Ellison, Ralph

(Encyclopedia)Ellison, Ralph (Ralph Waldo Ellison), 1914–94, African-American author, b. Oklahoma City, studied Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee Univ.). Originally a trumpet player and aspiring composer, he moved...

Goldsmith, Oliver

(Encyclopedia)Goldsmith, Oliver, 1730?–1774, Anglo-Irish author. The son of an Irish clergyman, he was graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1749. He studied medicine at Edinburgh and Leiden, but his career ...

N. Scott Momaday

(Encyclopedia)N. Scott Momaday (Navarre Scott Momaday), 1934–2024, American writer whose works are reflective of his Kiowa culture, b. Lawton, Okla., B.A. Univ. of ...

Moore, George

(Encyclopedia)Moore, George, 1852–1933, English author, b. Ireland. As a young man he lived in Paris, studying at various art schools. Inspired by Zola, Flaubert, Turgenev, and the 19th-century French realists, M...

Ortega y Gasset, José

(Encyclopedia)Ortega y Gasset, José hōsāˈ ôrtāˈgä ē gäsĕtˈ [key], 1883–1955, Spanish essayist and philosopher. He studied in Germany and was influenced by neo-Kantian thought. He called his philosophy...

Lucretius

(Encyclopedia)Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) lo͞okrēˈshəs [key], c.99 b.c.–c.55 b.c., Roman poet and philosopher. Little is known about his life. A chronicle of St. Jerome speaks of the loss of his reason ...

Wajda, Andrzej

(Encyclopedia)Wajda, Andrzej änˈjā vīˈdä [key], 1926–2016, Polish film director, leading member of the Polish Film School, which began in the 1950s. His films are typically studies of Poland's modern histor...