Edmund, Saint, d. 869, king of East Anglia (855-869). He was supposedly martyred by the invading Danes for his adherence to Christianity. His shrine was at Bury St. Edmunds. Feast: Nov. 20.

Edmund, Saint (Edmund Rich), 1170?-1240, English churchman, archbishop of Canterbury, b. Abingdon. He taught at Oxford. A forceful preacher, he successfully preached (1227) the crusade against the Saracens. Edmund was made archbishop in 1234 and mediated the peace between Wales and England. His zeal for reform antagonized Henry III who, to isolate St. Edmund, secured from Rome a papal legate sympathetic to himself, with jurisdiction over the archbishop. His episcopacy thus neutralized, St. Edmund retired reluctantly to Pontigny, a Cistercian abbey in France, where he died soon after. Feast: Nov. 16.

Edmund, 921-46, king of Wessex (939-46), half brother and successor of Athelstan. Immediately after his accession he had to face an invasion of Irish vikings led by Olaf Guthfrithson. He was forced to cede to them the territory between Watling Street and the Northumbrian border (already occupied partly by Danes), and he succeeded in recapturing it in 944 only because of the quarrels among the Norse leaders. In 945 he invaded Strathclyde, which he then turned over to the Scottish king Malcolm I. Edmund was killed in a brawl and was succeeded by his brother Edred.

Wilson, Edmund, 1895-1972, American critic and author, b. Red Bank, N.J. grad. Princeton, 1916. He is considered one of the most important American literary and social critics of the 20th cent. From 1920 to 1921 he was managing editor of Vanity Fair, and he was later on the staffs of the New Republic (1926-31) and New Yorker (1944-48). In the 1930s he was much interested in the theories of Freud and Marx, ideas that are treated in many of his works. Among his major writings are Axel's Castle (1931), a study of symbolism (see symbolists) and other imaginative modernist literatures; The Wound and the Bow (1941); The Shores of Light (1952); and Patriotic Gore (1962), on the American Civil War.

As a critic Wilson was concerned with the social, psychological, and political conditions that shape literary ideas. His social studies include To the Finland Station (1940), a history of the European revolutionary tradition that praises the Soviet Union (a position he soon reversed), and The American Earthquake (1958), a record of the Great Depression. His versatility is further revealed in his I Thought of Daisy (1929), a novel; Memoirs of Hecate County (1949), short stories; and Five Plays (1954). Wilson also edited F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished The Last Tycoon and posthumous The Crack-up (both: 1945). His later works include Israel and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1955), A Window on Russia (1973), and The Devils and Canon Barham: 10 Essays on Poets, Novelists, and Monsters (1973). Wilson's third wife was the author Mary McCarthy.

Waller, Edmund, 1606-87, English poet. He studied at Eton and Cambridge and became a prominent speaker in Parliament at a young age. He married twice (1631 and 1644), but his early poems are addressed to "Sacharissa," Lady Dorothy Sidney, who refused to marry him. Although at first an antiroyalist, he later supported Charles I against Parliament and conceived "Waller's plot" (1643) to secure the city of London for the king. The plot was discovered, and Waller was fined and banished. He was pardoned in 1651 and after the Restoration was again in Parliament, where he served until his death. His verse is noted for its smoothness and polish, but aside from a few amatory poems his importance rests on his contributions in style, most notably the development of the heroic couplet. The first collection of his works appeared in 1645 and immediately went through several editions. His best-known lyrics are "Go, Lovely Rose" and "On a Girdle."

Husserl, Edmund, 1859-1938, German philosopher, founder of the phenomenological movement (see phenomenology). He was professor at Göttingen and Freiburg and was greatly influenced by Franz Brentano. His philosophy is a descriptive study of consciousness for the purpose of discovering the structure of experience, i.e., the laws by which experiences are had. His method was to "bracket" the data of consciousness by suspending all preconceptions, especially those drawn from the "naturalistic standpoint." Thus, objects of pure imagination are examined with the same seriousness as data taken from the objective world. Husserl concluded that consciousness has no life apart from the objects it considers. This characteristic he calls "intentionality" (object-directedness), following Brentano. In his later work, Husserl moved toward idealism and denied that objects exist outside consciousness. His chief works are Logische Untersuchungen (1900-1901) and Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology (tr. 1952).

Gunter, Edmund, 1581-1626, English mathematician and astronomer, educated at Westminster School, London, and Christ Church, Oxford. He invented (1618) a small portable quadrant and discovered (1622) the variation of the magnetic compass. His Gunter's chain is a surveyor's chain graduated on the decimal scale. He devised Gunter's scale, a logarithmic scale of equal parts as well as trigonometric functions, which with the aid of compasses served as a slide rule.

Randolph, Edmund, 1753-1813, American statesman, b. Williamsburg, Va.; nephew of Peyton Randolph. He studied law under his father, John Randolph, a Loyalist who went to England at the outbreak of the American Revolution. He served briefly in the Continental army as aide-de-camp to George Washington. He was a member of the Virginia constitutional convention of 1776, state attorney general (1776-86), a delegate to the Continental Congress (1779-82), and governor of Virginia (1786-88). Randolph was prominent at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, presenting the Virginia, or Randolph, Plan, which favored the large states. He at first vigorously opposed the Constitution as finally drafted, although his plan, more than any other, closely resembled it; later he urged its adoption in the Virginia ratifying convention (June, 1788). First Attorney General of the United States (1789-94), he left that post to succeed Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State. Like Jefferson, he had difficulties because of Alexander Hamilton's constant pressure to secure a favorable treaty with England rather than one with France. In 1795 the British captured dispatches of the French minister to the United States, which implied (falsely) that Randolph would welcome French money, whereupon President Washington forced his resignation. Randolph returned to the practice of law in Virginia, and many years passed before his name was entirely cleared. In 1807 he was chief counsel for Aaron Burr in his trial for treason.

Rich, Edmund: see Edmund, Saint.

Beaufort, Edmund: see Somerset, Edmund Beaufort, 2d duke of.

Fanning, Edmund, 1739-1818, American Loyalist in the American Revolution, b. Suffolk co., Long Island, N.Y. He moved to North Carolina, practiced law, held minor political posts, and supported the royal governor, William Tryon. Fanning was the special object of contempt for the rebels of the Regulator movement. He went as Tryon's secretary to New York where he held offices. In 1775 he raised a Loyalist regiment that fought in partisan actions in the New York area throughout the war. After the Revolution he was lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia (1783-86) and lieutenant governor of Prince Edward Island (1786-1805). Fanning spent his last years in England.

Fanning, Edmund, 1769-1841, American trader, explorer, and promoter of trade and exploration in the South Seas, b. Stonington, Conn. At the age of 14 he went to sea. In command of a trading vessel, he realized a large profit from an expedition in 1797-98. In the course of the voyage he traded a cargo of trinkets for seal skins in the islands off the coast of Chile and exchanged them for valuable Chinese goods at Guangzhou, returning around the Cape of Good Hope. During the expedition he discovered Fanning Island, Washington Island, and other islands. Convinced of the profits to be made from trade in the South Seas, he became the agent for a group of New York City merchants, supervising over 70 expeditions and participating in some of them. His Voyages around the World (1833), which shed light on some of the little-known parts of the globe, passed through several editions.

Ludlow, Edmund, 1617?-1692, English parliamentarian and regicide. He commanded a regiment of cavalry in the English civil war and served on the court that condemned King Charles I, signing his death warrant. In 1651-52 he was assistant and then successor to Henry Ireton in the subjugation of Ireland. He sympathized with the republican Puritans and opposed the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell and his son Richard and likewise the restoration of Charles II. After the Restoration (1660) he fled to Switzerland. He returned to England briefly in 1689, meeting with survivors of the republican party, but the government issued a warrant for his arrest, and he returned to Switzerland.

Ruffin, Edmund, 1794-1865, American agriculturist, one of the Southern fire-eaters, b. Prince George co., Va. His interest in improving impoverished land led him to become a pioneer in soil chemistry. Against much opposition he advocated the benefits of marl and proved its value. His arguments were propounded in An Essay on Calcareous Manures (1832, 5th rev. ed. 1852). He founded (1833) and edited until 1842 an excellent agricultural publication, the Farmers' Register. An ardent supporter of states' rights and secession, he left Virginia for the more congenial political milieu of South Carolina, where on Apr. 12, 1861, he was given the privilege of firing the first shot against Fort Sumter. With the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox he committed suicide.

Kirby-Smith, Edmund: see Smith, Edmund Kirby.

Burke, Edmund, 1729-97, British political writer and statesman, b. Dublin, Ireland.

Early Writings

After graduating (1748) from Trinity College, Dublin, he began the study of law in London but abandoned it to devote himself to writing. His satirical Vindication of Natural Society (1756) attacked the political rationalism and religious skepticism of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, and his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) was a study in aesthetics. In 1759 he founded the Annual Register, a periodical to which he contributed until 1788. Burke was a member of Samuel Johnson's intimate circle.

Political Career and Later Writings

Burke's political career began in 1765 when he became private secretary to the marquess of Rockingham, then prime minister, and formed a lifelong friendship with that leader. He also entered Parliament in 1765 and there strove for a wiser treatment of the American colonies. In 1766 he spoke in favor of the repeal of the Stamp Act, although he also supported the Declaratory Act, asserting Britain's constitutional right to tax the colonists. In his famous later speeches on American taxation (1774) and on conciliation with the colonies (1775), he did not abandon that position; rather he urged the imprudence of exercising such theoretical rights.

At a time when political allegiances were based largely on family connections and patronage and political opposition was generally regarded as factionalism, Burke, in his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770), became the first political philosopher to argue the value of political parties. He called for a limitation of crown patronage (so-called economical reform) and as paymaster of the forces (1782-83) in the second Rockingham ministry was able to enact some of his proposals.

He was also interested in reform of the East India Company and drafted the East India Bill presented (1783) by Charles James Fox. Influenced by Sir Philip Francis, he instigated the impeachment and long trial of Warren Hastings. Hastings was acquitted, but Burke's speeches created some new awareness of the responsibilities of empire and of the injustices perpetrated in India and previously unpublicized in England.

Although he championed many liberal and reform causes, Burke believed that political, social, and religious institutions represented the wisdom of the ages; he feared political reform beyond limitations on the power of the crown. Consequently, his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) made him the spokesman of European conservatives. His stand against the French Revolution—and, by implication, against parliamentary reform—caused him to break with Fox and his Whigs in 1791. Burke's Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791) shows how closely he approached the Tory position of the younger William Pitt. He withdrew from political life in 1795.

Influence

Burke left, in his many and diverse writings, a monumental construction of British political thought that had far-reaching influence in England, America, and France for many years. He held unrestricted rationalism in human affairs to be destructive. He affirmed the utility of habit and prejudice and the importance of continuity in political experience. The son of a Protestant father and a Roman Catholic mother and himself a Protestant, he never ceased to criticize the English administration in Ireland and the galling discrimination against Catholics.

Spenser, Edmund, 1552?-1599, English poet, b. London. He was the friend of men eminent in literature and at court, including Gabriel Harvey, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Robert Sidney, earl of Leicester. After serving as secretary to the Bishop of Rochester, Spenser was appointed in 1580 secretary to Lord Grey, lord deputy of Ireland. Afterward Spenser lived in Ireland, holding minor civil offices and receiving the lands and castle of Kilcolman, Co. Cork. In 1589, under Raleigh's sponsorship, Spenser went to London, where he apparently sought court preferment and publication of the first three books of The Faerie Queene. After the Tyrone rebellion of 1598, in which Kilcolman Castle was burned, he returned to London, where he died in 1599. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. Recognized by his contemporaries as the foremost poet of his time, Spenser was not only a master of meter and language but a profound moral poet as well. Patterning his literary career after that of Vergil, Spenser first published 12 pastoral eclogues of The Shepheardes Calender (1579), which treat the shepherd as rustic priest and poet. His Complaints and Daphnaida, the latter an elegy on Douglas Howard, both appeared in 1591. In 1595 Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, a pastoral allegory dealing with Spenser's first London journey and the vices inherent in court life, and Astrophel, an elegy on Sir Philip Sidney, were published. In the same year Amoretti, Spenser's sonnet sequence commemorating his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle, and Epithalamion, a beautiful and complex wedding poem in honor of his marriage in 1594, were also published. Fowre Hymnes, which explains Spenser's Platonic and Christian views of love and beauty, and Prothalamion appeared in 1596. Also in 1596 the first six books of The Faerie Queene, Spenser's unfinished masterpiece, appeared. Although the poem is an epic, his method was to treat the moral virtues allegorically. The excellence of The Faerie Queene lies in the complexity and depth of Spenser's moral vision and in the Spenserian stanza (nine lines, eight of iambic pentameter followed by one of iambic hexameter, rhyming ababbcbcc), which Spenser invented for his masterpiece. Spenser's only extended prose work, A View of the Present State of Ireland, was first printed in 1633.

White, Edmund (Edmund Valentine White 3d), 1940-, American writer, b. Cincinnati, grad. Univ. of Michigan (B.A., 1962). White is one of the best known—and probably the finest stylist—of the openly gay writers who came to public attention in the 1970s and 80s. His first novel, Forgetting Elena (1973), the tale of a young amnesiac's struggle to reassemble his life, was highly stylized and linguistically inventive, as was Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978). His later works concentrate on the struggles, pleasures, and political stances of members of contemporary America's middle-class male homosexual community. These themes are evident in a semiautobiographical trilogy of novels tracing the protagonist's realization of his sexuality and coming of age (A Boy's Own Story, 1982), his troubled young manhood and political awakening (The Beautiful Room Is Empty, 1988), and his middle age in an AIDS-ravaged city (The Farewell Symphony, 1997). Among White's other works are the novels The Married Man (2000), Fanny (2003), and Hotel de Dream (2007) and short stories, e.g., those in Skinned Alive (1995). His nonfiction includes The Joy of Gay Sex (coauthor, 1977), States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980), a monumental biography of Jean Genet (1993), short biographies of Proust (1999) and Rimbaud (2008), and a study of Paris entitled The Flâneur (2001).

Cartwright, Edmund, 1743-1823, English inventor and clergyman. He was the inventor of an imperfect power loom that, when finally patented (1785), became the parent of the modern loom. It was the first machine to make practical the weaving of wide cotton cloth. A few of Cartwright's many other inventions were a wool-combing machine (1789), a machine for ropemaking (1792), and an engine (1797) that used alcohol as fuel. He cooperated with Fulton on his experiments with steam navigation.

Dulac, Edmund, 1882-1953, French illustrator of English books. He is known for his imaginative, colorful illustrations of the Arabian Nights (1907), Shakespeare's Tempest (1908), and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1909).

Pendleton, Edmund, 1721-1803, American jurist and political leader in the American Revolution, b. Caroline co., Va. He began law practice in 1741 and was elected (1752) to the Virginia house of burgesses, where, although a leading conservative, he became an outstanding opponent of British colonial policies. Pendleton was a member of the Virginia committee of correspondence, delegate to the First Continental Congress (1774-75), head of the Virginia committee of safety (1775), and president of the convention (1776) that adopted his resolution instructing Virginia delegates to the Continental Congress to propose independence from Britain. After independence he was elected speaker of the new house of delegates. With Thomas Jefferson and George Wythe he completed (1779) the revision of the state's laws and was president of the court of appeals from 1779 to 1789 and of the reorganized supreme court of appeals from 1789 till his death. In 1788 he presided over the state convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution.

Calamy, Edmund, 1600-1666, English Presbyterian preacher. In 1636 his opposition to the observance of certain church ceremonies forced his withdrawal as lecturer at Bury St. Edmunds. A leader among the Presbyterians, Calamy was a member of the Westminster Assembly (1643) and was one of the authors of the Smectymnuus, directed against Bishop Joseph Hall's apology for a moderate episcopacy. At the Restoration, he was made a chaplain to the king. Ejected under the Act of Uniformity (1662), he was imprisoned for a short time for having preached after ejection. A number of his sermons were published. His grandson, Edmund Calamy, 1671-1732, nonconformist minister in London, also published many sermons, but he is particularly remembered for his Account of the Ministers Ejected by the Act for Uniformity (1702). His autobiography was published in 1829.

Kean, Edmund, 1787?-1833, English actor. Kean's acting expressed the ideal of the romantic temperament. A small man with a wild spirit and a gruff voice, he was lauded for his facial mobility; according to Coleridge he had the power to reveal Shakespeare by "flashes of lightning." With his energy and violent emotions, Kean brought about a radical change in the prevailing classical style of the period.

Kean served an apprenticeship with groups of provincial and strolling players and in 1814 appeared at Drury Lane as Shylock, a triumph that is a landmark in the history of the theater. He further increased his reputation with portrayals of Richard III, Iago, Othello, Macbeth, Barabbas, and Sir Giles Overreach. In the United States in 1820-21 Kean had many triumphs, but a broken engagement in Boston ruined his popularity there.

Kean's personal life was as stormy as his career. In 1822 a suit against him for adultery resulted in his separation from his wife and son and hastened the disintegration of his reputation. In 1825 he again visited the United States and in some measure retrieved his reputation. After his return to England in 1826 his health and dramatic powers declined.

His son, Charles John Kean, 1811?-1868, went on the stage against his father's wishes. At his father's last appearance in 1833 he played Iago to his father's Othello at Covent Garden. He often played opposite his wife, Ellen Tree Kean, 1808-80, a noted comedienne, whom he married in 1842.

(born Oct. 19, 1856, Geneva, Ill., U.S.—died March 3, 1939, New York, N.Y.) U.S. cell biologist. He joined the Columbia University faculty in 1891, where he became established as a pioneer in work on cell lineage (tracing the formation of different kinds of tissues from individual cells). His interests later extended to internal cellular organization and the problem of sex determination, leading to a series of papers (1905) on the role of chromosomes. Recognizing the importance of Gregor Mendel's findings, he realized that the role of chromosomes went far beyond the determination of sex and envisioned their function as important components in heredity as a whole, ideas that were a powerful force in shaping future genetic research.

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(born May 8, 1895, Red Bank, N.J., U.S.—died June 12, 1972, Talcottville, N.Y.) U.S. critic and essayist. He attended Princeton University and initially worked as a reporter and magazine editor. Much of his writing, in which he probed diverse subjects with scholarship and common sense in clear and precise prose, was published in The New Republic and The New Yorker. Among his influential critical works are Axel's Castle (1931), a survey of the Symbolist poets; To the Finland Station (1940), a study of the thinkers who set the stage for the Russian Revolution; and Patriotic Gore (1962), analyzing American Civil War literature. His other writings include plays, poetry, the short-story collection Memoirs of Hecate County (1946), and five volumes of posthumously published journals. He was widely regarded as the leading critic of his time.

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(born March 3, 1606, Coleshill, Hertfordshire, Eng.—died Oct. 21, 1687, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire) English poet. Waller's sympathies moved from Parliament to king during the political turmoil of the 1640s, and he was arrested for his part in a plot to establish London as a royal stronghold. By betraying his colleagues and by lavish bribes, he avoided death. He later wrote poetic tributes to both Oliver Cromwell (1655) and Charles II (1660). Rejecting the dense intellectual verse of Metaphysical poetry, he adopted generalizing statement, easy associative development, and urbane social comment. With his emphasis on definitive phrasing through inversion and balance, he prepared the way for the emergence of the heroic couplet. By the end of the 17th century the heroic couplet was the dominant form of English poetry. Waller's lyrics include the famous “Go, lovely Rose!”

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(born March 24, 1902, Owosso, Mich., U.S.—died March 16, 1971, Bal Harbour, Fla.) U.S. attorney and politician. He became an assistant U.S. attorney in New York in 1931 and was elected district attorney in 1937. His successful prosecution of organized-crime figures won him three terms as governor of New York (1943–55), during which he pursued policies of political and fiscal moderation. He received the Republican presidential nomination in 1944 but was soundly defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt; nominated again in 1948, he was widely predicted to defeat the incumbent, Harry S. Truman, but Truman retained the vote of farmers and labour to prevail. Dewey retired from politics in 1955 but continued to advise Republican administrations.

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(born 1552/53, London, Eng.—died Jan. 13, 1599, London) English poet. Little is known for certain about his life before he entered the University of Cambridge. His first important publication, The Shepheardes Calender (1579), can be called the first work of the English literary Renaissance. By 1580 he was apparently serving the Earl of Leicester and was part of a literary circle led by Sir Philip Sidney. In 1580 he became secretary to the lord deputy of Ireland, where he spent much of his remaining life; in 1588 or 1589 he took over a large property at Kilcolman, near Cork. In 1590 he published the first part of the long allegorical poem The Faerie Queene (first folio ed., 1609), an imaginative vindication of Protestantism and Puritanism and a glorification of England and Elizabeth I. The central poem of the Elizabethan period and one of the greatest poems in English, it was composed in a revolutionary nine-line stanzaic pattern, the “Spenserian stanza,” that was used by many later poets. Of the 12 books he planned for the poem, he completed just over half. Amoretti (1595), a sonnet sequence, and Epithalamion (1595), a marriage ode, are among his other works. In the Irish uprising of 1598, Kilcolman was burned; Spenser, probably in despair, died shortly after.

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(born July 20, 1919, Auckland, N.Z.—died Jan. 11, 2008, Auckland) New Zealand mountain climber and explorer. Hillary was a professional beekeeper but enjoyed climbing in the New Zealand Alps. In 1951 he joined a New Zealand party to the central Himalayas and then went on to help in a reconnaissance of the southern flank of Everest. In 1953, as a member of the British Everest expedition, he and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit on May 29, becoming the first known climbers to do so. The achievement brought Hillary worldwide fame and he was knighted that same year. In 1958 he participated in the first crossing of Antarctica by vehicle. From the 1960s he helped build schools and hospitals for the Sherpa people.

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(born Dec. 6, 1637, London, Eng.—died Feb. 24, 1714, London) English colonial administrator in North America. Appointed governor of New York and New Jersey in 1674, he was recalled in 1681 following complaints from colonists. He returned in 1686 as governor of the Dominion of New England, a kind of supercolony imposed by Britain. His interference in local government aroused sharp resentment among the colonists, and in 1688 they revolted and imprisoned him. Andros was recalled to England but returned as governor of Virginia (1692) and Maryland (1693–94).

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(born Jan. 5, 1794, Prince George county, Va., U.S.—died June 18, 1865, Amelia county, Va.) U.S. agriculturist and secessionist. Educated largely at home, he managed his father's tobacco plantation from 1813. He found that overuse and poor farming methods produced an acid soil unable to retain fertilizers; in 1832 he published an influential book advocating the use of marl to reduce soil acidity, which helped restore Southern plantations to productivity. He also published the Farmer's Register (1833–42) and lectured widely on agriculture. In the 1850s he defended slavery and advocated secession. He fired one of the first shots at Fort Sumter (1861). Unable to accept the South's defeat, he killed himself.

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(born May 6, 1904, Jämshög, Swed.—died Feb. 11, 1978, Stockholm) Swedish novelist and poet. He spent his childhood in foster homes and his young adulthood as a merchant seaman, labourer, and vagrant. He described his early experiences in two autobiographical novels, Flowering Nettle (1935) and The Way Out (1936), and in travel sketches. Among his best-known works are the poetry collection Trade Wind (1945), the novel The Road (1948), and the epic poem Aniara (1956). In 1949 he became the first self-taught working-class writer ever elected to the Swedish Academy. He shared the 1974 Nobel Prize for Literature with Eyvind Johnson.

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(born March 17?, 1789, London, Eng.—died May 15, 1833, London) British actor. He acted with a touring stage company from 1805, and in 1814 he won acclaim in London with his innovative portrayal of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. He went on to specialize in other Shakespearean villains, including Richard III, Iago, and Macbeth. He also excelled at playing Othello and Hamlet, as well as Barabas in Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. Though praised for his passionate and sensational stage portrayals, he became unpopular for his ungovernable behaviour offstage, marked by excessive drinking and a suit for adultery (1825). His son Charles (1811–68) was an actor-manager noted for his revivals of Shakespearean plays.

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(born April 8, 1859, Prossnitz, Moravia, Austrian Empire—died April 27, 1938, Freiburg im Breisgau, Ger.) German philosopher, founder of phenomenology. He received a doctoral degree in mathematics at the University of Vienna in 1882. From 1883 to 1886 he studied with Franz Brentano, whose descriptive psychology prompted Husserl to reflect on the psychological sources of basic mathematical concepts. He lectured at the University of Halle from 1887 to 1901. His Logical Investigations (1901) employed a method he called “phenomenological,” consisting of an analysis of experienced reality exactly as it presents itself to consciousness. He developed the method in Ideas (1913) and other works written while teaching at the University of Göttingen (1901–16); its fundamental methodological principle was what he called phenomenological, or “eidetic,” reduction, which focuses the philosopher's attention on uninterpreted experience and the quest, thereby, for the essences of things. Because it is also reflection on the functions by which essences become conscious, the reduction reveals the ego for which everything has meaning. In 1916 Husserl accepted a professorship at the University of Freiburg, where Martin Heidegger was one of his students; when Husserl retired in 1928, Heidegger succeeded to his chair. After 1933, when the Nazis seized power in Germany, Husserl was excluded from the university because of his Jewishness. His work was enormously influential in the subsequent development of Continental philosophy and in other fields, including the social sciences and psychoanalytic theory.

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(born July 20, 1919, Auckland, N.Z.—died Jan. 11, 2008, Auckland) New Zealand mountain climber and explorer. Hillary was a professional beekeeper but enjoyed climbing in the New Zealand Alps. In 1951 he joined a New Zealand party to the central Himalayas and then went on to help in a reconnaissance of the southern flank of Everest. In 1953, as a member of the British Everest expedition, he and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit on May 29, becoming the first known climbers to do so. The achievement brought Hillary worldwide fame and he was knighted that same year. In 1958 he participated in the first crossing of Antarctica by vehicle. From the 1960s he helped build schools and hospitals for the Sherpa people.

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(born May 6, 1904, Jämshög, Swed.—died Feb. 11, 1978, Stockholm) Swedish novelist and poet. He spent his childhood in foster homes and his young adulthood as a merchant seaman, labourer, and vagrant. He described his early experiences in two autobiographical novels, Flowering Nettle (1935) and The Way Out (1936), and in travel sketches. Among his best-known works are the poetry collection Trade Wind (1945), the novel The Road (1948), and the epic poem Aniara (1956). In 1949 he became the first self-taught working-class writer ever elected to the Swedish Academy. He shared the 1974 Nobel Prize for Literature with Eyvind Johnson.

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(born May 8, 1895, Red Bank, N.J., U.S.—died June 12, 1972, Talcottville, N.Y.) U.S. critic and essayist. He attended Princeton University and initially worked as a reporter and magazine editor. Much of his writing, in which he probed diverse subjects with scholarship and common sense in clear and precise prose, was published in The New Republic and The New Yorker. Among his influential critical works are Axel's Castle (1931), a survey of the Symbolist poets; To the Finland Station (1940), a study of the thinkers who set the stage for the Russian Revolution; and Patriotic Gore (1962), analyzing American Civil War literature. His other writings include plays, poetry, the short-story collection Memoirs of Hecate County (1946), and five volumes of posthumously published journals. He was widely regarded as the leading critic of his time.

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(born March 3, 1606, Coleshill, Hertfordshire, Eng.—died Oct. 21, 1687, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire) English poet. Waller's sympathies moved from Parliament to king during the political turmoil of the 1640s, and he was arrested for his part in a plot to establish London as a royal stronghold. By betraying his colleagues and by lavish bribes, he avoided death. He later wrote poetic tributes to both Oliver Cromwell (1655) and Charles II (1660). Rejecting the dense intellectual verse of Metaphysical poetry, he adopted generalizing statement, easy associative development, and urbane social comment. With his emphasis on definitive phrasing through inversion and balance, he prepared the way for the emergence of the heroic couplet. By the end of the 17th century the heroic couplet was the dominant form of English poetry. Waller's lyrics include the famous “Go, lovely Rose!”

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(born 1552/53, London, Eng.—died Jan. 13, 1599, London) English poet. Little is known for certain about his life before he entered the University of Cambridge. His first important publication, The Shepheardes Calender (1579), can be called the first work of the English literary Renaissance. By 1580 he was apparently serving the Earl of Leicester and was part of a literary circle led by Sir Philip Sidney. In 1580 he became secretary to the lord deputy of Ireland, where he spent much of his remaining life; in 1588 or 1589 he took over a large property at Kilcolman, near Cork. In 1590 he published the first part of the long allegorical poem The Faerie Queene (first folio ed., 1609), an imaginative vindication of Protestantism and Puritanism and a glorification of England and Elizabeth I. The central poem of the Elizabethan period and one of the greatest poems in English, it was composed in a revolutionary nine-line stanzaic pattern, the “Spenserian stanza,” that was used by many later poets. Of the 12 books he planned for the poem, he completed just over half. Amoretti (1595), a sonnet sequence, and Epithalamion (1595), a marriage ode, are among his other works. In the Irish uprising of 1598, Kilcolman was burned; Spenser, probably in despair, died shortly after.

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(born Jan. 5, 1794, Prince George county, Va., U.S.—died June 18, 1865, Amelia county, Va.) U.S. agriculturist and secessionist. Educated largely at home, he managed his father's tobacco plantation from 1813. He found that overuse and poor farming methods produced an acid soil unable to retain fertilizers; in 1832 he published an influential book advocating the use of marl to reduce soil acidity, which helped restore Southern plantations to productivity. He also published the Farmer's Register (1833–42) and lectured widely on agriculture. In the 1850s he defended slavery and advocated secession. He fired one of the first shots at Fort Sumter (1861). Unable to accept the South's defeat, he killed himself.

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(born March 17?, 1789, London, Eng.—died May 15, 1833, London) British actor. He acted with a touring stage company from 1805, and in 1814 he won acclaim in London with his innovative portrayal of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. He went on to specialize in other Shakespearean villains, including Richard III, Iago, and Macbeth. He also excelled at playing Othello and Hamlet, as well as Barabas in Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. Though praised for his passionate and sensational stage portrayals, he became unpopular for his ungovernable behaviour offstage, marked by excessive drinking and a suit for adultery (1825). His son Charles (1811–68) was an actor-manager noted for his revivals of Shakespearean plays.

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(born April 8, 1859, Prossnitz, Moravia, Austrian Empire—died April 27, 1938, Freiburg im Breisgau, Ger.) German philosopher, founder of phenomenology. He received a doctoral degree in mathematics at the University of Vienna in 1882. From 1883 to 1886 he studied with Franz Brentano, whose descriptive psychology prompted Husserl to reflect on the psychological sources of basic mathematical concepts. He lectured at the University of Halle from 1887 to 1901. His Logical Investigations (1901) employed a method he called “phenomenological,” consisting of an analysis of experienced reality exactly as it presents itself to consciousness. He developed the method in Ideas (1913) and other works written while teaching at the University of Göttingen (1901–16); its fundamental methodological principle was what he called phenomenological, or “eidetic,” reduction, which focuses the philosopher's attention on uninterpreted experience and the quest, thereby, for the essences of things. Because it is also reflection on the functions by which essences become conscious, the reduction reveals the ego for which everything has meaning. In 1916 Husserl accepted a professorship at the University of Freiburg, where Martin Heidegger was one of his students; when Husserl retired in 1928, Heidegger succeeded to his chair. After 1933, when the Nazis seized power in Germany, Husserl was excluded from the university because of his Jewishness. His work was enormously influential in the subsequent development of Continental philosophy and in other fields, including the social sciences and psychoanalytic theory.

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(born April 24, 1743, Marnham, Nottinghamshire, Eng.—died Oct. 30, 1823, Hastings, Sussex) British inventor. On visiting Richard Arkwright's cotton-spinning mills, he was inspired to construct a power-driven machine for weaving. He invented a power loom and set up a weaving and spinning factory in Yorkshire. In 1789 he patented a wool-combing machine. In 1809 the House of Commons voted to reward him for the benefits his loom had conferred on the nation. His other inventions included a cordelier (machine for making rope) and a steam engine that used alcohol instead of water.

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(born January 12?, 1729, Dublin, Ire.—died July 9, 1797, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, Eng.) British parliamentarian, orator, and political philosopher. The son of a lawyer, he began legal studies but lost interest, became estranged from his father, and spent some time wandering about England and France. Essays he published in 1757–58 gained the attention of Denis Diderot, Immanuel Kant, and Gotthold Lessing, and he was hired to edit a yearly survey of world affairs (1758–88). He entered politics (1765) as secretary to a Whig leader and soon became involved in the controversy over whether Parliament or the monarch controlled the executive. He argued (1770) that George III's efforts to reassert a more active role for the crown violated the constitution's spirit. Elected to Parliament (1774–80), he contended that its members should exercise judgment rather than merely follow their constituents' desires. Although a strong constitutionalist, he was not a supporter of pure democracy; although a conservative, he eloquently championed the cause of the American colonists, whom he regarded as badly governed, and he supported the abolition of the international slave trade. He tried unsuccessfully to legislate relief for Ireland and to reform the governance of India. He disapproved of the French Revolution for its leaders' precipitous actions and its antiaristocratic bloodshed. He is often regarded as the founder of modern conservatism.

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(born Oct. 19, 1856, Geneva, Ill., U.S.—died March 3, 1939, New York, N.Y.) U.S. cell biologist. He joined the Columbia University faculty in 1891, where he became established as a pioneer in work on cell lineage (tracing the formation of different kinds of tissues from individual cells). His interests later extended to internal cellular organization and the problem of sex determination, leading to a series of papers (1905) on the role of chromosomes. Recognizing the importance of Gregor Mendel's findings, he realized that the role of chromosomes went far beyond the determination of sex and envisioned their function as important components in heredity as a whole, ideas that were a powerful force in shaping future genetic research.

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(born March 24, 1902, Owosso, Mich., U.S.—died March 16, 1971, Bal Harbour, Fla.) U.S. attorney and politician. He became an assistant U.S. attorney in New York in 1931 and was elected district attorney in 1937. His successful prosecution of organized-crime figures won him three terms as governor of New York (1943–55), during which he pursued policies of political and fiscal moderation. He received the Republican presidential nomination in 1944 but was soundly defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt; nominated again in 1948, he was widely predicted to defeat the incumbent, Harry S. Truman, but Truman retained the vote of farmers and labour to prevail. Dewey retired from politics in 1955 but continued to advise Republican administrations.

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(born April 24, 1743, Marnham, Nottinghamshire, Eng.—died Oct. 30, 1823, Hastings, Sussex) British inventor. On visiting Richard Arkwright's cotton-spinning mills, he was inspired to construct a power-driven machine for weaving. He invented a power loom and set up a weaving and spinning factory in Yorkshire. In 1789 he patented a wool-combing machine. In 1809 the House of Commons voted to reward him for the benefits his loom had conferred on the nation. His other inventions included a cordelier (machine for making rope) and a steam engine that used alcohol instead of water.

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(born January 12?, 1729, Dublin, Ire.—died July 9, 1797, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, Eng.) British parliamentarian, orator, and political philosopher. The son of a lawyer, he began legal studies but lost interest, became estranged from his father, and spent some time wandering about England and France. Essays he published in 1757–58 gained the attention of Denis Diderot, Immanuel Kant, and Gotthold Lessing, and he was hired to edit a yearly survey of world affairs (1758–88). He entered politics (1765) as secretary to a Whig leader and soon became involved in the controversy over whether Parliament or the monarch controlled the executive. He argued (1770) that George III's efforts to reassert a more active role for the crown violated the constitution's spirit. Elected to Parliament (1774–80), he contended that its members should exercise judgment rather than merely follow their constituents' desires. Although a strong constitutionalist, he was not a supporter of pure democracy; although a conservative, he eloquently championed the cause of the American colonists, whom he regarded as badly governed, and he supported the abolition of the international slave trade. He tried unsuccessfully to legislate relief for Ireland and to reform the governance of India. He disapproved of the French Revolution for its leaders' precipitous actions and its antiaristocratic bloodshed. He is often regarded as the founder of modern conservatism.

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(born Dec. 6, 1637, London, Eng.—died Feb. 24, 1714, London) English colonial administrator in North America. Appointed governor of New York and New Jersey in 1674, he was recalled in 1681 following complaints from colonists. He returned in 1686 as governor of the Dominion of New England, a kind of supercolony imposed by Britain. His interference in local government aroused sharp resentment among the colonists, and in 1688 they revolted and imprisoned him. Andros was recalled to England but returned as governor of Virginia (1692) and Maryland (1693–94).

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(born April 23, 1861, Brackenhurst, near Southwell, Nottinghamshire, Eng.—died May 14, 1936, London) British field marshal. He fought in the South African War and served as inspector general of cavalry (1910–14). In World War I, he commanded with distinction in the Middle East. His victory over the Turks at Gaza (1917) led to the capture of Jerusalem, and his victory at Megiddo, along with his capture of Damascus and Aleppo, ended Ottoman power in Syria. His success was partly due to his innovative use of cavalry and other mobile forces, and he is remembered as the last great British leader of mounted cavalry. As high commissioner for Egypt (1919–25), he steered that country to recognition as a sovereign state (1922).

Learn more about Allenby (of Megiddo and of Felixstowe), Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, 1st Viscount with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Edmund may refer to:

People or characters with Edmund as the full name:

• Edmund I of England
• Edmund II of England
• St. Edmund of East Anglia
• St. Edmund Rich, also known as Edmund of Abingdon
• Edmund I of Scotland
• Edmund of Sicily
• Eadmund of Durham
• Edmund the Martyr
• Eadmund of Winchester, early 9th-century Bishop of Winchester
• Edmund, 2nd Earl of Cornwall
• Edmund (King Lear), an antagonist in Shakespeare's play

People or characters with the given name Edmund:

• Edmund (given name)
• Garrett, Edmund H., American Artist, Illustrator, and Author

Other:

• Edmund Scientific Corporation
• S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, A famous cargo ship that sank on the Lake Superior in the 1970's

See also

• Edmond
• Edward