Le Duan (1908-1986) was a major figure in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War and the principal leader of all Vietnam in the postwar era. He proved to be a good wartime ruler, but was less successful as a leader dealing with the problems ...

L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) wrote 69 books beloved by children, including The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which became a classic movie. Lyman Frank Baum was born on May 15, 1856, near Syracuse, New York. His father, Benjamin, was a wealthy oil b...

Leslie Poles Hartley sustains his high critical reputation and faithful readership in twentieth-century British fiction as a minor but respected writer of well-made novels of manners and sensibility notable for their moral and psychologica...

Lyon Sprague de Camp is one of America's leading writers and scholars of fantasy and science fiction. His interests in technology, history, and language have also resulted in the publication of numerous works of popular science, archaeolog...

Albert Laberge was a pioneer of naturalism and realism in French-Canadian fiction, modes that developed late in Quebec because of the powerful conservative influences of clerical and lay ideologues. Together with his friend Rodolphe Girard...

French obstetrician Marie Louise LaChapelle (1769-1821) introduced many innovations to the management of childbirth, especially in the cases of difficult labor. She attended thousands of births and produced a massive three-volume book desc...

When Jacques de Lacretelle died in 1985 at the age of ninety-six the daily Figaro called him the last French moralist. It would have been more correct to say that he was the last traditional novelist. Between the two world wars he was accl...

Many writers spend their careers fighting injustice; most fail. Sam Lacy's tenacity and skill, however, enabled him successfully to aid the desegregation of American sports, especially baseball. Lacy was one of the most outspoken advocates...

The following essay discussed Lady Anne Blunt and her husband, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt and Lady Anne Blunt, née Annabella Isabella Noel, later fifteenth Baroness Wentworth, were each descended from one of the fami...

The English writer Lady Antonia Fraser (born 1932), was a popular biographer, historian, and mystery novelist. Lady Antonia Fraser was born on August 27, 1932, in London, England. She was the daughter of the seventh Earl of Longford, Franc...

Even though she died at the age of only sixteen and left behind a relatively small body of work--some carefully crafted letters, a prayer, a theological debate, and a dying speech--Lady Jane Grey is one of the best-known women of sixteenth...

Well known throughout polite society for her wit and verse, English world traveller Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) also worked to introduce the practice of inoculation against smallpox to the medical establishment of eighteenth-cent...

Sydney Owenson, who became Lady Morgan when she married in 1812, began one of the most successful and controversial writing careers of the nineteenth century in 1801, a pivotal moment in British history after the Act of Union made Ireland ...

The author of five novels for young adults, author A. LaFaye has, in the space of a few years, created a number of memorable books featuring interesting settings and spirited female protagonists. Often choosing historical settings, LaFaye ...

The restlessness that has characterized the artistic world of the twentieth century is reflected by the proliferation of many schools, movements, and currents in all creative fields but, most prominently, in cinema and literature. It is, h...

An English author of historical fiction for young people, Laird has been consistently praised for writing moving, thought-provoking works that successfully blend real facts, people, and events with invented characters and situations. Altho...

The Hungarian statesman and orator Louis, or Lajos, Kossuth (1802-1894) was the foremost leader of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848-1849 and the symbol of Magyar nationalism. The son of an impoverished Lutheran nobleman, Louis Kossuth was ...

Lala Lajpat Rai (1865-1928) was an Indian nationalist leader and was well known for his many publications regarding national problems. Lala Lajpat Rai was born in the Ferozepore district of the Punjab to a respectable Hindu family. He stud...

Michèle Lalonde is one of the poets of the Hexagone generation. Although she has been a poet since she first began to write, her poetry has perceptibly evolved from the obscure works written toward the end of the 1950s to the poems ...

Betty Lambert, who wrote in several genres, is best known as a dramatist. Born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1933, she was the oldest of Christopher and Bessie Copper Lee's three daughters. As Elizabeth Minnie Lee, she grew up in Calgary, gradua...

The rise of Lana Turner (1920-1995) from humble origins to Hollywood stardom made her an inspiration to a generation of young American women. She achieved great popular acclaim during her acting career, but her personal life was marred by ...

Perhaps no U. S. judge in the 1990s was more widely recognized than California Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito. Presiding over the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson in 1995, the 44-year old Ito became a household name. Millions of Americans...

The following essay discusses the work of Jay Landesman and his wife, Fran Landesman. Jay and Fran Landesman are perhaps best known for Jay's editorship of the ground-breaking magazine, Neurotica , in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and fo...

Chroniclers of Acadian letters mention Father Napoléon-P. Landry's poetic attempts for the completeness of the historical record and for the particular documentary value of his two volumes (preparation of a third was interrupted by ...

In their introduction to a 2001 volume of essays about the contemporary Jewish novelist Jakov Lind, Andrea Hammel and Edward Timms claimed that "few authors exemplify the phenomenon of writing after the bestialities of the Nazi regime more...