Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Nayler, James

(Encyclopedia)Nayler, James, 1617?–1660, English Quaker leader. He served in the parliamentary army during the English civil war. In 1651 he became a Quaker and a disciple of George Fox, but gradually gathered a ...

Orrmulum

(Encyclopedia)Orrmulum or Ormulum both: ôrmˈyo͞oləm [key], Middle English collection of homilies on the Gospels, in verse, comprising about 10,000 lines in all. The collection was written c.1200 by Orrm (or Orr...

Herbert, A. P.

(Encyclopedia)Herbert, A. P. (Sir Alan Patrick Herbert), 1890–1971, English author and member of Parliament. He was a regular contributor to the comic magazine Punch from 1910 until his death. Herbert served in P...

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...

Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur Thomas kwĭlˈər-ko͞ochˌ [key], pseud. Q, 1863–1944, English author. Among the novels of his native Cornwall are Dead Man's Rock (1887) and Hetty Wesley (1903), which ar...

Bracton, Henry de

(Encyclopedia)Bracton, Henry de, d. 1268, English writer on law. He was the author of De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae [on the laws and customs of England], a broad, philosophic treatise that is often called t...

Lee, Sir Sidney

(Encyclopedia)Lee, Sir Sidney, 1859–1926, English editor and author. He was editor (1891–1901) of the Dictionary of National Biography but is best known for his Life of William Shakespeare (1898, rev. ed. 1925)...

Cotton, Charles

(Encyclopedia)Cotton, Charles, 1630–87, English author. He is chiefly remembered for his contribution to his friend Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler (5th ed. 1676). His pleasant, unaffected verse includes “An Ode...

Fuller, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Fuller, Thomas, 1608–61, English clergyman and author. He was an able preacher and a noted wit. He adhered to the royalist cause during the civil war and the Commonwealth and served briefly as a roy...

Mandeville, Sir John

(Encyclopedia)Mandeville, Sir John, 14th-century English author of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Originally written in Norman French, the work became enormously popular and was translated into English, Latin,...