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Wilde, Oscar

(Encyclopedia)Wilde, Oscar (Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde), 1854–1900, Irish author and wit, b. Dublin. He is most famous for his sophisticated, brilliantly witty plays, which were the first since the come...

Mallet, David

(Encyclopedia)Mallet or Malloch, David mălˈĭt, –əkh [key], c.1705–1765, English poet and dramatist, b. Scotland. His best-known work is the ballad William and Margaret (1720). Although he wrote several trag...

Tracy, Honor

(Encyclopedia)Tracy, Honor, pseud. of Lilbush Wingfield, 1913–89, British writer, b. Bury St. Edmonds, Suffolk. A long-time foreign correspondent, Tracy is best known as a travel writer. Her novels satirize Briti...

Lover, Samuel

(Encyclopedia)Lover, Samuel, 1797–1868, Irish painter, novelist, and songwriter. Before turning to literature, Lover was a painter, and in 1828 he became a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy of Art. However, h...

Carey, Henry

(Encyclopedia)Carey, Henry, 1687–1743, English author. After the first collection of his poems appeared in 1713, he turned to writing for the stage. Primarily a writer of farce comedy, his greatest success was Ch...

folk song

(Encyclopedia)folk song, music of anonymous composition, transmitted orally. The theory that folk songs were originally group compositions has been modified in recent studies. These assume that the germ of a folk m...

Macdonald, Flora

(Encyclopedia)Macdonald, Flora, 1722–90, Scottish Jacobite heroine. She aided Charles Edward Stuart, known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, to escape to France after the defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden Moor in 1746....

Dodsley, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Dodsley, Robert, 1703–64, English publisher and author. He wrote occasional verses, and also several plays, including The King and the Miller of Mansfield (1737); a ballad opera, The Blind Beggar of...

Hayden, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Hayden, Robert hāˈdən [key], 1913–80, American poet, b. Detroit. After earning his M.A. at the Univ. of Michigan, he taught there and at Fisk Univ. Although the tone of his poems is quiet and oft...

Kasprowicz, Jan

(Encyclopedia)Kasprowicz, Jan yän käsprôˈvēch [key], 1860–1926, Polish poet. His writings progressed from social revolt (e.g., From a Peasant's Field, 1891) to poems of spiritual struggle and philosophical i...