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Provençal literature

(Encyclopedia)Provençal literature, vernacular literature of S France. Provençal, or Occitan, as the language is now often called, appears to have been the first vernacular tongue used in French commerce and lite...

Austen, Jane

(Encyclopedia)Austen, Jane ôˈstən [key], 1775–1817, English novelist. The daughter of a clergyman, she spent the first 25 years of her life at “Steventon,” her father's Hampshire vicarage. Here her first n...

Hals, Frans

(Encyclopedia)Hals, Frans fräns häls [key], c.1580–1666, Dutch painter of portraits and genre scenes, b. Antwerp. Hals spent most of his life in Haarlem, where he studied with Karel van Mander and became (1610)...

Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel

(Encyclopedia)Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel mēgĕlˈ ēᵺälˈgō ē kōstēˈyä [key], 1753–1811, Mexican priest and revolutionary, a national hero. A creole intellectual, he was influenced by the French Revolut...

Maugham, Somerset

(Encyclopedia)Maugham, Somerset (William Somerset Maugham) môm [key], 1874–1965, English writer, b. Paris. He was noted as an expert storyteller and a master of the technique of fiction. An introverted child aff...

Clinton, Hillary Rodham

(Encyclopedia)Clinton, Hillary Rodham rŏdˈəm [key], 1947–, U.S. senator and secretary of state, wife of President Bill Clinton, b. Chicago, grad. Wellesley College (B.A. 1969), Yale Law School (LL.B., 1973). A...

Edward VI

(Encyclopedia)Edward VI, 1537–53, king of England (1547–53), son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour. Edward succeeded his father to the throne at the age of nine. Henry had made arrangements for a council of regent...

Dresden

(Encyclopedia)Dresden drĕzˈdən [key], city, capital of Saxony, E central Germany, on the Elbe River. It ...

Douglass, Frederick

(Encyclopedia)Douglass, Frederick dŭgˈləs [key], c.1818–1895, American abolitionist, b. near Easton, Md. as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. The son of a black slave, Harriet Bailey, and a white father, m...

Weill, Kurt

(Encyclopedia)Weill, Kurt ko͝ortˈ vīl [key], 1900–1950, German-American composer, b. Dessau, studied with Humperdinck and Busoni in Berlin. He first became known with the production of two short satirical surr...
 

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