When William Sydney Porter had his first book, Cabbages and Kings (1904), published he had only six more years to live. But, with his identity hidden beneath the legendary pen name O. Henry, the fame of his short stories was already firmly...

Violet Oakley--a versatile portraitist, illustrator, stained-glass artisan, and muralist--earned a reputation as the first American woman artist to succeed in the predominantly male architectural field of mural decoration. She began her ca...

Obadiah Walker published many books on academic and religious subjects; his most popular work, Of Education, Especially of Young Gentlemen (1673), went through eight editions by 1699. He also wrote on optics, grammar, logic, geography (a d...

In Camps in the Caribbees: The Adventures of a Naturalist in the Lesser Antilles (1880), lamenting the disorder and lack of cleanliness of the culinary facilities in one of his rustic campsites on the island of Dominica, Frederick Albion O...

Charlotte Grace O'Brien was an energetic and strong-willed Irish political reformer and writer who recorded many of her experiences, both political and personal, in her poetry. O'Brien's poems span the middle ground between traditional, se...

Octave Crémazie (1827-1879) was a Canadian poet who was closely linked to the emergence of French-Canadian literature. Known as Octave, Claude-Joseph-Olivier Crémazie was born on Nov. 8, 1827, and educated in Quebec. He becam...

Best known for his controversial novels and plays, Octave Mirbeau remains to be rediscovered as a short-fiction writer and art critic. He championed the causes of unknown artists who were destined to become giants in their fields: first an...

The Mexican diplomat, playwright, and essayist, Octavio Paz (1914-1998) was internationally regarded as one of the principal poets of the twentieth century. His work was formally recognized in 1990 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in li...

Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) was a Japanese warrior chieftain who undertook the first stage in the military unification of Japan in the later 16th century after nearly a hundred years of disorder and disunion. From the time of its founding in ...

One of a set of twins, Odd Hassel was born May 17, 1897, in Kristiana (now Oslo), Norway. His father Ernst was a gynecologist. His mother, Mathilde Klaveness Hassel, raised her four sons and one daughter alone after her husband died when O...

Although known mostly as a poet, Eunice Odio also wrote in the epistolary genre, in addition to short stories and critical essays on art and literature. Despite her solid poetic production, she has gained little public attention among the ...

Prince Aleksandr Ivanovich Odoevsky, a descendant of the ancient clan of the Rurikids, was born on 26 November 1802 in St. Petersburg. An illustrious ancestor, Prince Ivan Vasil'evich, had served as president of the Votchinaiia Kollegiia, ...

Howard Washington Odum (1884-1954) was a sociologist, educator, and academic administrator. He was the preeminent sociologist of the American South during the second quarter of the 20th century. Howard W. Odum was born May 24, 1884, on a s...

Julia O'Faolain, novelist and short story writer, is considered one of the most accomplished Irish writers of her generation and one of the few with a truly international background. While she is at her best in some darkly comic short stor...

Ogden Nash (1902-1971) was arguably one of the most commercially successful English-language poets of the twentieth century. Nash's verse skewered the pretensions of the modern middle class existence and gave voice to the inner seethings o...

Desmond O'Grady has enjoyed for more than twenty-five years a productive international career as a poet and educator. He has been one of a group of Irish poets who, after Denis Devlin and Patrick Kavanagh, have worked to bring Irish poetry...

Howard O'Hagan has been described as "The writer that CanLit forgot." His major novel, Tay John, was first published in London in 1939, where its effect was lost in the turmoil of war. It was republished in New York in 1960 but still attra...

Susumo Ohno's long and productive scientific career, influential in many areas of biology and genetics, was begun because of his love of horses. Ohno received his DVM from the Veterinary College of the Tokyo University of Agriculture and T...

John O'Keeffe began his career as a singer and actor in Ireland, appearing both in Dublin and in the provincial theaters. He soon began writing songs, comic sketches, and pantomimes; by the time he moved permanently to London in 1781 he wa...

Kim Ok-kyun (1851-1894) was a Korean politician in the last decades of the Yi dynasty. He attempted to reform Korean politics and government along the line of the Meiji Japanese development. A son of Kim Byng-t'e of the city of Kngju, Kim ...

When Okot p'Bitek surprised the world with Song of Lawino in 1966, he was recognized immediately as a major African poet. No other African writer-except possibly Christopher Okigbo of Nigeria—had made such an indelible impact with hi...

Everyone has problems and tragedies that they try to overcome. No one would have blamed Oksana Baiul if she had given up, saying enough is enough. In an amazing story, Baiul refused to quit, despite many heartbreaking setbacks. A virtually...

The Japanese statesman and politician Shigenobu Okuma (1838-1922) was one of the early leaders of the Meiji government. He later broke with it to become one of its most eloquent and respected critics. Born on Feb. 16, 1838, in Saga, the ca...

Olaf I Tryggrason (968-1000) was a Viking warrior, who acquired wealth and fame by his raids in Britain and strove to bring national leadership and Christianity to pagan, politically divided tenth-century Norway. To appreciate King Olaf Tr...

Few writers fit so oddly into their chosen fields as Olaf Stapledon, a science-fiction writer whose knowledge of the genre was so limited that he appears to have written his early "philosophical romances" without any clear idea of the wide...