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Harcourt, Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon

(Encyclopedia)Harcourt, Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon, 1827–1904, English statesman. A brilliant parliamentarian and a supporter of Gladstone, he entered Parliament in 1868 and had a notable career...

Seward, William Henry

(Encyclopedia)Seward, William Henry, 1801–72, American statesman, b. Florida, Orange co., N.Y. In 1861, Seward became Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln, and many expected him to be the real power in th...

Falconer, William

(Encyclopedia)Falconer, William fôkˈnər [key], 1732–69, Scottish poet. The victim of a shipwreck off Greece, he described his ordeal in a long, didactic poem, The Shipwreck (1762). He also wrote (1769) a sourc...

Eggleston, William

(Encyclopedia)Eggleston, William (William Joseph Eggleston, Jr.), 1939–, American photographer credited with establishing color photography as an art form, b. Memphis Tenn. His early work in black and white was i...

Thurlow, Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron

(Encyclopedia)Thurlow, Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron, 1731–1806, lord chancellor of England. Called to the bar in 1754, he enjoyed considerable success in legal practice. He was made a king's counsel in 1762 and ente...

Beebe, William

(Encyclopedia)Beebe, William (Charles William Beebe) bēˈbē [key], 1877–1962, American ornithologist, explorer, and author, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., B.S. Columbia, 1898. He became (1899) curator of ornithology and la...

O'Brien, William

(Encyclopedia)O'Brien, William, 1852–1928, Irish journalist and political leader. He became (1881) editor of a newspaper, United Ireland, which championed the Irish agrarian cause (see Irish Land Question). Impri...

Brown, William Wells

(Encyclopedia)Brown, William Wells, 1814–84, African-American abolitionist, writer, and doctor, b. near Lexington, Ky. Born into slavery, the child of a black slave mother and a white slaveholding father, Brown f...

Oman, Sir Charles William Chadwick

(Encyclopedia)Oman, Sir Charles William Chadwick ōˈmən [key], 1860–1946, British historian, b. India, educated at Oxford under William Stubbs. He was a foremost military historian; his most notable works are A...

Wotton, William

(Encyclopedia)Wotton, William, 1666–1727, English scholar. He is best known for his Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1694), a defense of contemporary learning written in response to an essay by Sir W...