Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Morris, William

(Encyclopedia)Morris, William, 1834–96, English poet, artist, craftsman, designer, social reformer, and printer. He has long been considered one of the great Victorians and has been called the greatest English de...

Mulholland, William

(Encyclopedia)Mulholland, William, 1855–1935, American engineer, b. Belfast, Ireland. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1877, becoming a laborer for the local water company. Despite his lack of formal training, he eve...

Mason, William

(Encyclopedia)Mason, William, 1724–97, English poet, editor, and cleric. His works include two plays, Elfrida (1752) and Caractacus (1759), based on classical dramas. He was a friend of Thomas Gray, whose Life an...

Mitchell, William

(Encyclopedia)Mitchell, William (Billy Mitchell), 1879–1936, American army officer and pilot, b. Nice, France. He enlisted (1898) in the U.S. army in the Spanish-American War and received a commission in the regu...

Baffin, William

(Encyclopedia)Baffin, William, c.1584–1622, British arctic explorer. He was pilot on two expeditions (1615–16) sent out to search for the Northwest Passage under command of Robert Bylot, who was formerly with H...

Congreve, William

(Encyclopedia)Congreve, William, 1670–1729, English dramatist, b. near Leeds, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and studied law in the Middle Temple. After publishing a novel of intrigue, Incognita (1692), and...

Collins, William

(Encyclopedia)Collins, William, 1721–59, English poet. He was one of the great lyricists of the 18th cent. While he was still at Oxford he published Persian Ecologues (1742), which was written when he was 17. Uns...

Cowper, William

(Encyclopedia)Cowper, William ko͞oˈpər, kouˈ– [key], 1731–1800, English poet. Physically and emotionally unfit for the professional life, he was admitted to the bar but never practiced. After a battle with ...

Coxe, William

(Encyclopedia)Coxe, William, 1762–1831, American pomologist, b. Philadelphia. His experiments and his book, A View of the Cultivation of Fruit-Trees and the Management of Orchards and Cider (1817), had a pronounc...

Coddington, William

(Encyclopedia)Coddington, William, 1601–78, one of the founders of Rhode Island, probably b. Boston, England. He came to America in 1630 as an officer of the Massachusetts Bay Company and was its treasurer from 1...
 

Browse by Subject