- Industry: Library & information science
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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 ...
An English musical composer and pianist, born at Sheffield, whose musical genius recommended him to Mendelssohn and Schumann; became professor of Music in Cambridge, and conductor of the Philharmonic Concerts; was president of the Royal Academy of Music (1816-1873).
Industry:Language
Born at Exeter; employed on embassies by Elizabeth on the Continent, where he collected a number of valuable books; bequeathed them and his fortune to the university library of Oxford, named after him (1545-1613).
Industry:Language
Physician and religious thinker, born in London; resided at Norwich for nearly half a century, and died there; was knighted by Charles II.; "was," Professor Saintsbury says, "the greatest prose writer perhaps, when all things are taken together, in the whole range of English"; his principal works are "Religio Medici," "Inquiries into Vulgar Errors," and "Hydriotaphia, or Urn-Burial, a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns found in Norfolk"; "all of the very first importance in English literature,..." adds the professor, "the 'Religio Medici' the greatest favourite, and a sort of key to the others;" "a man," says Coleridge, "rich in various knowledge, exuberant in conceptions and conceits, contemplative, imaginative, often truly great, and magnificent in his style and diction.... He is a quiet and sublime enthusiast, with a strong tinge of the fantastic. He meditated much on death and the hereafter, and on the former in its relation to, or leading on to, the latter" (1605-1682).
Industry:Language
British general, a man of science and an astronomer, born near Largs, Ayrshire; saw service as a soldier; was appointed governor of New South Wales to the profit of the colony; gave name to the capital of Queensland; catalogued over 7000 stars; succeeded Scott as president of the Royal Society (1773-1860).
Industry:Language
A man of letters, born at Portsmouth; eminent chiefly as a novelist of a healthily realistic type; wrote a number of novels jointly with James Rice, and is the author of "French Humourists," as well as short stories; champion of the cause of Authors versus Publishers, and is chairman of the committee; b. 1838.
Industry:Language
Portrait-painter, born in Oxfordshire; among his portraits were those of Lord Nelson, John Kemble, and Mrs. Siddons (1753-1839).
Industry:Language
An eminent jurist and judge, born in London, the son of a silk-mercer; was fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, and in 1746 called to the bar; became first Vinerian professor of Law at Oxford; had Jeremy Bentham for one of his pupils; author of the well-known "Commentaries on the Laws of England," an authority on the subject and a work that has appeared in many editions (1723-1780).
Industry:Language
The founder of Western monachism, born near Spoleto; left home at 14; passed three years as a hermit, in a cavern near Subiaco, to prepare himself for God's service; attracted many to his retreat; appointed to an abbey, but left it; founded 12 monasteries of his own; though possessed of no scholarship, composed his "Regula Monachorum," which formed the rule of his order; represented in art as accompanied by a raven with sometimes a loaf in his bill, or surrounded by thorns or by howling demons (480-543). See Benedictines.
Industry:Language
Abbot of Clairvaux, born at Fontaines, in Burgundy; pronounced one of the grandest figures in the church militant; studied in Paris, entered the monastery of Citeaux, founded in 1115 a monastery at Clairvaux, in Champagne; drew around him disciples who rose to eminence as soldiers of the cross; prepared the statutes for the Knights-Templar; defeated Abelard in public debate, and procured his condemnation; founded 160 monasteries; awoke Europe to a second crusade; dealt death-blows all round to no end of heretics, and declined all honors to himself, content if he could only awake some divine passion in other men; represented in art as accompanied by a white dog, or as contemplating an apparition of the Virgin and the Child, or as bearing the implements of Christ's passion (1091-1174). Festival, Aug. 20.
Industry:Language