One of the most widely discussed and renowned twentieth-century authors, D. H. Lawrence remains intriguing and problematic in terms of his biography, his writings, and his prophetic role. In his relatively short life, he was a prolific aut...

Dorothy Kathleen Broster's writing career spanned the period from just before World War I until just after World War II, and this turbulent period of uncertainty and conflict may well have influenced the attitudes encoded in her work. Her ...

David Wark Griffith (1875-1948), American filmmaker, was a pioneer director-producer who invented much of the basic technical grammar of modern cinema. On Jan. 22, 1875, D.W. Griffith was born at Crestwood, Oldham County, Ky., the descenda...

Robert Daborne, a minor Jacobean play-wright and clergyman, is of interest today mainly because of his series of letters to theatrical entrepreneur Philip Henslowe, which show Henslowe's relations with the dramatists in his employ and whic...

In Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms (1986) editors Philip Dacey and David Jauss provide an overview of the continuing presence of formal poetry in contemporary writing. Strong Measures brought Dacey and hi...

The Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961) served as the secretary general of the United Nations from 1953 until his death. Dag Hammarskjöld played a leading role in expanding the operations of the United Nations (UN), mos...

The Japanese emperor Daigo II (1288-1339) attempted to restore the power of the throne upon the destruction of the country's first military government, or shogunate, in 1333. Since the establishment of a centralized state in Japan under th...

Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (1870-1966) was a Japanese translator, teacher, and constructive interpreter of Zen Buddhist thought to the West. Teitaro Suzuki was born in Kanazawa in western Japan on October 18, 1870. His ancestors as well as his...

Maria Dabrowska is generally regarded in Poland as one of the most prominent Polish prose writers of the twentieth century. She has not, however, gained a similar recognition outside her native country, although her major novel, Noce i dni...

Dale Chihuly has almost single-handedly turned the craft of glass-blowing into an art form in America, moving far beyond the common vision of glass to create glass sculpture in a multitude of forms, colors, and sizes. Transferring the Euro...

Like many poets writing since World War II, Peter Dale works in both formal and free verse. Seeking clarity above all else, Dale stands ready to use whatever is appropriate, and often his best writing is done while he is poised between the...

Born on 31 July 1904 in New York City, Arthur John Daley thought of himself throughout his life as a New Yorker. New York was where he was raised and schooled and where he spent his entire professional career as a newspaper reporter. From ...

E. S. Dallas, journalist and speculative critic, remains best known to scholars and literary historians as the author of The Gay Science (1866), a pioneering work in the field of psychological criticism which was either ignored or resoundi...

Louis D'Alton was one of the leading Irish playwrights of the late 1930s and the 1940s, a period when Ireland, due to its wartime neutrality, was isolated as at no other time from the rest of the world. As a result, he is regarded today as...

Marie M. Daly was the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry. Throughout her career, her research interests focused on areas of health, particularly the effects on the heart and arteries of such factors as aging, cigaret...

Thomas Augustine Daly is best known for his humorous verse primarily in Italian or Irish-American dialect. Although popular for forty years as a poet, he was a versatile writer, and he built an international reputation as an author, column...

The Zimbabwean novelist and poet Dambudzo Marechera emerged in the late 1970s as a new voice in African literature, but his writing career lasted less than a decade. His iconoclastic, dense style expressed the psychological fragmentation p...

Damon Runyon was one of the most popular journalists and writers during the first half of this century. After he died in 1946, Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows adapted Runyon stories and characters into the Broadway musical hit, Guys and Dolls,...

Dubbed a "new master of smart thrills" by Samantha Miller in People magazine, Dan Brown broke into the realms of bestsellerdom with his fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code, a "riddle-filled, code-breaking, exhilaratingly brainy thriller," as J...

Chief Dan George (1899-1981), a member of the Coast Salish nation, gained fame as an actor relatively late in life. He is best remembered for his role as the Cheyenne elder, Old Lodge Skins, in the 1970 film Little Big Man alongside a youn...

Pressure is part of competing in the Olympics, an international event where the best athletes in the world give their best performances. Probably no athlete has ever faced as much pressure in the Olympics as speedskater Dan Jansen. The wor...

About Dan Michel of Northgate little is known, and much of what is known about him comes from his only work, which was completed in 1340. The Ayenbite of Inwyt (remorse of conscience, or, literally, again-biting of inner wit) is not an ori...

J. Danforth Quayle (born 1947) became the second-youngest member of Congress in history when he was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1976. He was the first person from the "baby boom" generation to win a spot on a n...

Bruce Bawer (Connoisseur, March 1989) notes that Dana Gioia is ... one of several younger poets--dubbed "The New Formalists"--who are challenging the poetry-world status quo in significant, possibly even historic, ways. Some of his more vo...

The most prolific of the poets in the Danforth family, John Danforth was the son of Samuel and Mary Danforth and the elder brother of Samuel Danforth II. He was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard in 1677, served as a fe...