A. A. Attanasio is a prominent writer of science fiction, fantasy, and historical novels whose major works include the "Radix Tetrad" and the "Tales of Arthor" series, as well as stand-alone titles such as the popular Wyvern, the historica...

Called the dean of American illustrators by critics and contemporaries, A. B. Frost has been described as the most American of the American illustrators of the turn of the century. Throughout his fifty-year career as an illustrator he disp...

Arthur Christopher Benson was one of the most prolific and popular essayists of the Edwardian period. Son of an archbishop of Canterbury, editor of the selected letters of Queen Victoria, and author of "Land of Hope and Glory," he was an u...

The legacy of leading Australian poet A. D. Hope to world literature is unquestionable, comprising eleven books of poetry, seven collections of critical essays, and two plays. His writing, compelling in its originality and passion, and rig...

On All Fool's Day 1919 Alfred Edgar Coppard left his job as a clerk-cost accountant at the Eagle Ironworks in Oxford to live alone in a cottage at Shepards Pit, where he began to re-create himself as A. E. Coppard, author. Although the mos...

Without doubt, A. E. van Vogt was the first great Canadian science-fiction writer. In his heyday he was one of the most popular science-fiction authors in the world and is considered to belong to the so-called golden age of writers in the ...

A. J. A. Symons is remembered chiefly for his biography of Fr[ederick] Rolfe (or Baron Corvo). He did, however, publish two other substantial biographies and a range of miscellaneous works in his short life, and his younger brother, the pr...

In 1976 at Michigan State University, American and Canadian scholars and poets gathered to honor A. J. M. Smith, seventy-four-year-old doyen of Canadian letters. It is fitting that such a symposium should have been held at an American univ...

A. L. Kennedy is one of the most consistently energetic and critically acclaimed novelists to have emerged from Scotland in the closing years of the twentieth century. Since the early 1990s she has produced novels, collections of short sto...

A. M. Klein (1909-1972), journalist and lawyer, was widely regarded as one of Canada's leading poets. His novel The Second Scroll has been acclaimed by scholars and critics as a masterpiece. He contributed significantly to the emergence of...

Alan Patrick Herbert, recognized by the familiar initials A. P. H., wrote more than fifty books: musical comedies, novels, plays, light verse, reviews, and articles. A versatile author, he charmed a nation for more than fifty years with hi...

A. R. Gurney is one of the few major playwrights to emerge in the 1960s and maintain a flourishing stage career four decades later. His plays continue to be performed widely Off-Broadway and in resident, summer stock, community, and academ...

The Scottish psychologist Alexander Sutherland Neill (1883- 1973) is most famous as the founder of Summerhill School and as the developer of its radical child-centered theory of education. A Failure at School Born in Forfar, Scotland, on O...

Swami Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada (1896-1977) was a Hindu religious teacher who at the age of 69 came to the United States where he taught the practice of devotion to Krishna and founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Ab...

Aage Bohr followed his father, the eminent physicist Niels Bohr, into the field of theoretical physics. Bohr's father was director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen and instrumental in the development of the Manhattan ...

Aaron Copland (1900-1990) was one of the most important figures in American music during the second quarter of the 20th century, both as a composer and as a spokesman who was concerned about making Americans conscious of the importance of ...

Aaron Klug was born on August 11, 1926, in Zelvas, Lithuania, the son of Lazar Klug, a cattle dealer, and Bella Silin Klug. When he was two years old, he and his parents emigrated to Durban, South Africa. While attending Durban High School...

If verisimilitude were the benchmark for dramatic success, then writer and producer Aaron Sorkin, creator of the popular and iconoclastic television series The West Wing, would score one hundred percent. So real has his presidential charac...

The Jewish scholar Abba Arika (ca. 175-ca. 247), also known as Rav, founded a yeshiva, or academy, in Sura, Babylonia. The school remained an important center of Jewish learning until the 11th century. Abba Arika was born to an aristocrati...

Abba Hillel Silver (1893-1963), rabbi and Zionist leader, was considered among the most prominent leaders of American Judaism. Abba H. Silver, the son of Moses and Diana Silver, was born in Neinstadt, Lithuania, on Jan. 28, 1893. He was th...

Maj. J. R. Abbey's book collection was the largest and one of the most remarkable of his generation. He is perhaps best known for his collection of color-plate books and fine bindings, but he also collected many illuminated manuscripts and...

Abbott Lawrence (1792-1855), American manufacturer and diplomat, helped develop the New England textile industry and later represented those interests in the U.S. Congress. Abbott Lawrence was born on Dec. 16, 1792, in Groton, Mass., into ...

Lee K. Abbott is best known as a short-story writer who addresses the themes of lost love and family grief with an inventive voice and a deeply felt compassion for his naive, self-destructive characters. Abbott's stories tend to be comic, ...

The Berber Abd al-Mumin (ca. 1094-1163) was the founder of the Almohad dynasty in North Africa and Spain. Little is known of the background of Abd al-Mumin except that he was born about 1094 in a village close to Tlemcen (in present-day Al...

Abd al-Rahman I (731-788) was emir of Islamic Spain from 756 to 788. Known as "the Immigrant," he established the rule of the Umayyad dynasty in the Iberian Peninsula. Born near Damascus, Syria, Abd al-Rahman I was the son of the Umayyad p...