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Wodehouse, P. G.

(Encyclopedia)Wodehouse, P. G. (Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse)wood´hous [key], 1881–1975, English-American novelist and humorist. After a short period, first working at a bank and then writing for a London ...

Ballard, J. G.

(Encyclopedia)Ballard, J. G. (James Graham Ballard)bl´rd [key], 1930–2009, English writer, mainly of dystopian science fiction. Born to English parents in Shanghai, he was torn from his affluent surroundings...

Travers, P. L.

(Encyclopedia)Travers, P. L. (Pamela Lyndon Travers), 1899–1996, British author best known for her Mary Poppins children's books, b. Australia as Helen Lyndon Goff. She worked as an actress and journalist and mov...

Wells, H. G.

(Encyclopedia)Wells, H. G. (Herbert George Wells), 1866–1946, English author. Although he is probably best remembered for his works of science fiction, he was also an imaginative social thinker, working assiduous...

Snow, C. P.

(Encyclopedia)Snow, C. P. (Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow of Leicester), 1905–80, English author and physicist. Snow had an active, varied career, including several important positions in the British government. ...

Adler, H. G.

(Encyclopedia)Adler, H. G. (Hans Günther Adler)häns gün´tr äd´lr [key], 1910–88, modernist author and Holocaust studies pioneer, b. Prague to a German Jewish family, studied Charles Univ. He and his fam...

Sebald, W. G.

(Encyclopedia)Sebald, W. G. (Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald), 1944–2001, German novelist, grad. Freiburg Univ. (1965). Sebald's novels are dense, elegiac, and meditative. They mingle fiction with history and th...

Maddox, Lester G.

(Encyclopedia)Maddox, Lester G. (Lester Garfield Maddox, Sr), 1915–2003, U.S. public official, governor of Georgia (1967–71), b. Atlanta. He achieved national notoriety in 1964 when he drove African Americans f...

Chesterton, G. K.

(Encyclopedia)Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith Chesterton), 1874–1936, English author. Conservative, even reactionary, in his thinking, Chesterton was a convert (1922) to Roman Catholicism and its champion. He ha...

Robinson, Edward G.

(Encyclopedia)Robinson, Edward G., 1893–1973, American movie actor, b. Bucharest, Romania, as Emmanuel Goldberg. He made his stage debut in New York City in 1915. A short, tough-looking man, Robinson played both ...

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