- Industry: Library & information science
- Number of terms: 49473
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Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks. It was founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books. The ...
A celebrated Flemish painter, born at Antwerp; pictures and altar-pieces by him are to be seen in Brussels and Ghent (1582-1669).
Industry:Language
American journalist, member of Brook Farm, and became editor of the New York Tribune, the Sun, and a cyclopaedia: b. 1829.
Industry:Language
An English poet, born at Westminster; began life as a curate, an office which he was compelled to resign from his unseemly ways; took himself to the satire, first of the actors of the time in his "Rosciad," then of his critics in his "Apology," and then of Dr. Johnson in the "Ghost"; he wrote numerous satires, all vigorous, his happiest being deemed that against the Scotch, entitled "The Prophecy of Famine"; his life was a short one, and not wisely regulated (1731-1764).
Industry:Language
A French Benedictine, born near Autun; one of the authors of the great chronological work, "Art de Vérifier les Dates," and wrote the history of the Port Royal (1703-1778).
Industry:Language
A poet, born in Staffordshire; his poetry was of the burlesque order, and somewhat gross; chiefly famous for his translation of "Montaigne's Essays"; was friend and admirer of Isaak Walton, and wrote a supplement to his "Angler" (1630-1687).
Industry:Language
A friend of Lamb, Keats, and Leigh Hunt; celebrated for his Shakespearian learning; brought out an annotated Shakespeare, assisted by his wife; lectured on Shakespeare characters (1787-1877).
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A musical composer and pianist, born at Vienna; had Liszt and Thalberg for pupils (1791-1857).
Industry:Language
Great English naturalist and biologist, born at Shrewsbury, grandson of Erasmus Darwin on his father's side, and of Josiah Wedgwood on his mother's; studied at Edinburgh and Cambridge; in 1831 accompanied as naturalist without salary the Beagle in her voyage of exploration in the Southern Seas, on the condition that he should have the entire disposal of his collections, all of which he got, and which he ultimately distributed among various public institutions; he was absent from England for five years, and on his return published in 1836 his "Naturalist's Voyage Round the World," in 1839-43 accounts of the fruits of his researches and observations in the departments of geology and natural history during that voyage, in 1842 his treatise on the "Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs," and in 1859 his work on the "Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," a work which has proved epoch-making and gone far to revolutionise thought in the scientific study of, especially, animated nature, and is being applied to higher spheres of being; this work was followed by others more or less confirmatory, finishing off with "The Descent of Man" in 1871, in which he traces the human race to an extinct quadrumanous animal related to that which produced the orang-outang, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla. He may be said to have taken evolution out of the region of pure imagination, and by giving it a basis of fact, to have set it up as a reasonable working hypothesis. Prof. A. R. Wallace claims for Darwin "that he is the Newton of natural history, and has ... by his discovery of the law of natural selection and his demonstration of the great principles of the preservation of useful variations in the struggle for life, not only thrown a flood of light on the process of development of the whole organic world, but also established a firm foundation for the future study of nature." He was buried in Westminster Abbey (1809-1882).
Industry:Language
A painter, born at Leeds; his pictures have for subjects historical or dramatic scenes, and were very numerous; executed the frescoes that adorn the Peers' corridor at Westminster; was professor of Painting to the Royal Academy (1811-1890).
Industry:Language
A French heroine, born at St. Saturnin, of good birth, granddaughter of Corneille; well read in Voltaire and Plutarch; favoured the Revolution, but was shocked at the atrocities of the Jacobins; started from Caen for Paris as an avenging angel; sought out Marat, with difficulty got access to him, stabbed him to the heart as he sat "stewing in slipper-bath," and "his life with a groan gushed out, indignant, to the shades below"; when arrested, she "quietly surrendered"; when questioned as to her motive, she answered, "I killed one man to save a hundred thousand"; she was guillotined next day (1763-1793).
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