OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bodenstedt, Friedrich Martin von

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​BODENSTEDT, FRIEDRICH MARTIN VON (1819–1892), German author, was born at Peine, in Hanover, on the 22nd of April 1819. He studied in Göttingen, Munich and Berlin. His career was determined by his engagement in 1841 as tutor in the family of Prince Gallitzin at Moscow, where he gained a thorough knowledge of Russian. This led to his appointment in 1844 as the head of a public school at Tiflis, in Transcaucasia. He took the opportunity of his proximity to Persia to study Persian literature, and in 1851 published a volume of original poetry in oriental guise under the fanciful title, Die Lieder des Mirza Schaffy (English trans. by E. d’Esterre, 1880). The success of this work can only be compared with that of Edward FitzGerald’s Omar Khayyam, produced in somewhat similar circumstances, but differed from it in being immediate. It has gone through 160 editions in Germany, and has been translated into almost all literary languages. Nor is this celebrity undeserved, for although Bodenstedt does not attain the poetical elevation of FitzGerald, his view of life is wider, more cheerful and more sane, while the execution is a model of grace. On his return from the East, Bodenstedt engaged for a while in journalism, married the daughter of a Hessian officer (Matilde, the Edlitam of his poems), and was in 1854 appointed professor of Slavonic at Munich. The rich stores of knowledge which Bodenstedt brought back from the East were turned to account in two important books, Die Völker des Kaukasus und ihre Freiheits-Kämpfe gegen die Russen (1848), and Tausend und ein Tag im Orient (1850). For some time Bodenstedt continued to devote himself to Slavonic subjects, producing translations of Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgweniev, and of the poets of the Ukraines, and writing a tragedy on the false Demetrius, and an epic, Ada die Lesghierin, on a Circassian theme. Finding, probably, this vein exhausted, he exchanged his professorship in 1858 for one of Early English literature, and published (1858–1860) a valuable work on the English dramatists contemporary with Shakespeare, with copious translations. In 1862 he produced a standard translation of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and between 1866 and 1872 published a complete version of the plays, with the help of many coadjutors. In 1867 he undertook the direction of the court theatre at Meiningen, and was ennobled by the duke. After 1873 he lived successively at Altona, Berlin and Wiesbaden, where he died on the 19th of April 1892. His later works consist of an autobiography (1888), successful translations from Hafiz and Omar Khayyam, and lyrics and dramas which added little to his reputation.
An edition of his collected works in 12 vols. was published at Berlin (1866–1869), and his Erzählungen und Romane at Jena (1871–1872). For further biographical details, see Bodenstedt’s Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (2 vols., Berlin, 1888–1890); and G. Schenck, Friedrich von Bodenstedt. Ein Dichterleben in seinen Briefen (Berlin, 1893).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith

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​BODICHON, BARBARA LEIGH SMITH (1827–1891), English educationalist, was born at Watlington, Norfolk, on the 8th of April 1827, the daughter of Benjamin Smith (1783–1860), long M.P. for Norwich. She early showed a force of character and catholicity of sympathy that later won her a prominent place among philanthropists and social workers. In 1857 she married an eminent French physician, Dr Eugène Bodichon, and, although wintering many years in Algiers, continued to lead the movements she had initiated in behalf of Englishwomen. In 1869 she published her Brief Summary of the Laws of England concerning Women, which had a useful effect in helping forward the passage of the Married Women’s Property Act. In 1866, co-operating with Miss Emily Davies, she matured a scheme for the extension of university education to women, and the first small experiment at Hitchin developed into Girton College, to which Mme Bodichon gave liberally of her time and money. With all her public interests she found time for society and her favourite art of painting. She studied under William H. Hunt, and her water-colours, exhibited at the Salon, the Academy and elsewhere, showed great originality and talent, and were admired by Corot and Daubigny. Her London salon included many of the literary and artistic celebrities of her day; she was George Eliot’s most intimate friend, and, according to her, the first to recognize the authorship of Adam Bede. Her personal appearance is said to be described in that of Romola. Mme Bodichon died at Robertsbridge, Sussex, on the 11th of June 1891.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bodle

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​BODLE or Boddle (said to be from Bothwell, the name of a mint-master), a Scottish copper coin worth about one-sixth of an English penny, first issued under Charles II. It survives in the phrase “not to care a bodle.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bodley, Sir Thomas

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​BODLEY, SIR THOMAS (1545–1613), English diplomatist and scholar, founder of the Bodleian library, Oxford, was born at Exeter on the 2nd of March 1545. During the reign of Queen Mary, his father, John Bodley, being obliged to leave the kingdom on account of his Protestant principles, went to live at Geneva. In that university, in which Calvin and Beza were then teaching divinity, young Bodley studied for a short time. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth he returned with his father to England, and soon after entered Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1563 he took his B.A. degree, and was admitted a fellow of Merton College. In 1565 he read a Greek lecture in hall, took his M.A. degree the year after, and read natural philosophy in the public schools. In 1569 he was proctor, and for some time after was deputy public orator. Quitting Oxford in 1576, he made the tour of Europe; shortly after his return he became gentleman-usher to Queen Elizabeth; and in 1587, apparently, he married Ann Ball, a widow lady of considerable fortune, the daughter of a Mr Carew of Bristol. In 1584 he entered parliament as member for Portsmouth, and represented St German’s in 1586. In 1585 Bodley was entrusted ​with a mission to form a league between Frederick II. of Denmark and certain German princes to assist Henry of Navarre. He was next despatched on a secret mission to France; and in 1588 he was sent to the Hague as minister, a post which demanded great diplomatic skill, for it was in the Netherlands that the power of Spain had to be fought. The essential difficulties of his mission were complicated by the intrigues of the queen’s ministers at home, and Bodley repeatedly begged that he might be recalled. He was finally permitted to return to England in 1596, but finding his preferment obstructed by the jarring interests of Burleigh and Essex, he retired from public life. He was knighted on the 18th of April 1604. He is, however, remembered specially as the founder of the Bodleian at Oxford, practically the earliest public library in Europe (see Libraries). He determined, he said, “to take his farewell of state employments and to set up his staff at the library door in Oxford.” In 1598 his offer to restore the old library was accepted by the university. Bodley not only used his private fortune in his undertaking, but induced many of his friends to make valuable gifts of books. In 1611 he began its permanent endowment, and at his death in London on the 28th of January 1613, the greater part of his fortune was left to it. He was buried in the choir of Merton College chapel where a monument of black and white marble was erected to him.
Sir Thomas wrote his own life to the year 1609, which, with the first draft of the statutes drawn up for the library, and his letters to the librarian, Thomas James, was published by Thomas Hearne, under the title of Reliquiae Bodleianae, or Authentic Remains of Sir Thomas Bodley (London, 1703, 8vo).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bodmer, Johann Jakob

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​BODMER, JOHANN JAKOB (1698–1783), Swiss-German author, was born at Greifensee, near Zürich, on the 19th of July 1698. After first studying theology and then trying a commercial career, he finally found his vocation in letters. In 1725 he was appointed professor of Helvetian history in Zürich, a chair which he held for half a century, and in 1735 became a member of the “Grosser Rat.” He published (1721–1723), in conjunction with J. J. Breitinger (1701–1774) and several others, Die Discourse der Mahlern, a weekly journal after the model of the Spectator. Through his prose translation of Milton’s Paradise Lost (1732) and his successful endeavours to make a knowledge of English literature accessible to Germany, he aroused the hostile criticism of Gottsched (q.v.) and his school, a struggle which ended in the complete discomfiture of the latter. His most important writings are the treatises Von dem Wunderbaren in der Poesie (1740) and Kritische Betrachtungen über die poetischen Gemälde der Dichter (1741), in which he pleaded for the freedom of the imagination from the restriction imposed upon it by French pseudo-classicism. Bodmer’s epics Die Sündfluth (1751) and Noah (1751) are weak imitations of Klopstock’s Messias, and his plays are entirely deficient in dramatic qualities. He did valuable service to German literature by his editions of the Minnesingers and part of the Nibelungenlied. He died at Zürich on the 2nd of January 1783.
See T. W. Danzel, Gottsched und seine Zeit (Leipzig, 1848); J. Crüger, J. C. Gottsched, Bodmer und Breitinger (Stuttgart, 1884); F. Braitmaier, Geschichte der poetischen Theorie und Kritik von den Diskursen der Maler bis auf Lessing (Leipzig, 1888); Denkschrift zu Bodmers 200. Geburtstag (Zürich, 1900).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bodenbach

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​BODENBACH (Czech Podmokly), a town of Bohemia, Austria, 83 m. N.N.E. of Prague by rail. Pop. (1900) 10,782, almost exclusively German. It is situated on the left bank of the Elbe opposite Tetschen, and is an important railway junction, containing also an Austrian and a Saxon custom-house. Bodenbach, which in the middle of the 19th century had only a few hundred inhabitants, has become a very important industrial centre. Its principal manufactures include cotton and woollen goods, earthenware and crockery, chemicals, chicory, chocolate, sweetmeats and preserves, and beer. It has also a very active transit trade.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bodkin

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​BODKIN (Early Eng. boydekin, a dagger, a word of unknown origin, possibly connected with the Gaelic biodag, a short sword), a small, needle-like instrument of steel or bone with a flattened knob at one end, used in needlework. It has one or more slits or eyes, through which cord, tape or ribbon can be passed, for threading through a hem or series of loops. The word is also used of a small piercing instrument for making holes in cloth, &c.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bodhi Vamsa

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​BODHI VAMSA, a prose poem in elaborate Sanskritized Pali, composed by Upatissa in the reign of Mahinda IV. of Ceylon about A.D. 980. It is an adaptation of a previously existing work in Sinhalese on the same subject, and describes the bringing of a branch of the celebrated Bo or Bodhi tree (i.e. Wisdom Tree, under which the Buddha had attained wisdom) to Ceylon in the 3rd century B.C. The Bodhi Vamsa quotes verses from the Mahāvamsa, but draws a great deal of its material from other sources; and it has occasionally preserved details of the older tradition not found in any other sources known to us.
Edition in Pali for the Pali Text Society by S. Arthur Strong (London, 1891).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bodley, George Frederick

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​BODLEY, GEORGE FREDERICK (1827–1907), English architect, was the youngest son of a physician at Brighton, his elder brother, the Rev. W. H. Bodley, becoming a well-known Roman Catholic preacher and a professor at Oscott. He was articled to the famous architect Sir Gilbert Scott, under whose influence he became imbued with the spirit of the Gothic revival, and he gradually became known as the chief exponent of 14th-century English Gothic, and the leading ecclesiastical architect in England. One of his first churches was St Michael and All Angels, Brighton (1855), and among his principal erections may be mentioned All Saints, Cambridge; Eton Mission church, Hackney Wick; Clumber church; Eccleston church; Hoar Cross church; St Augustine’s, Pendlebury; Holy Trinity, Kensington; Chapel Allerton, Leeds; St Faith’s, Brentford; Queen’s College chapel, Cambridge; Marlborough College chapel; and Burton church. His domestic work included the London School Board offices, the new buildings at Magdalen, Oxford, and Hewell Grange (for Lord Windsor). From 1872 he had for twenty years the partnership of Mr T. Garner, who worked with him. He also designed (with his pupil James Vaughan) the cathedral at Washington, D.C., U.S.A., and cathedrals at San Francisco and in Tasmania; and when Mr Gilbert Scott’s design for his new Liverpool cathedral was successful in the competition he collaborated with the young architect in preparing for its erection. Bodley began contributing to the Royal Academy in 1854, and in 1881 was elected A.R.A., becoming R.A. in 1902. In addition to being a most learned master of architecture, he was a beautiful draughtsman, and a connoisseur in art; he published a volume of poems in 1899; and he was a designer of wall-papers and chintzes for Watts & Co., of Baker Street, London; in early life he had been in close alliance with the Pre-Raphaelites, and he did a great deal, like William Morris, to improve public taste in domestic decoration and furniture. He died on the 21st of October 1907, at Water Eaton, Oxford.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Avesnes

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​AVESNES, a town of northern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Nord, on the Helpe, 28 m. S.E. of Valenciennes by rail. Pop. (1906) 5076. The town is the seat of a sub-prefect, and has a tribunal of first instance, a chamber of commerce and a communal college. Its church of St Nicholas (16th century) has a tower 200 ft. high, with a fine chime of bells. The chief industry of the town is wool-spinning, and there is trade in wood. Avesnes was founded in the 11th century, and formed a countship which in the 15th century passed to the house of Burgundy and afterwards to that of Habsburg. In 1477 it was destroyed by Louis XI. By the treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) it came into the possession of the French, and was fortified by Vauban. It was captured by the Prussians in 1815.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Avezzano

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​AVEZZANO, a town of the Abruzzi, Italy, in the province of Aquila, 67 m. E. of Rome by rail and 38 m. S. of Aquila by road. Pop. (1901) 9442. It has a fine and well-preserved castle, built in 1490 by Gentile Virginio Orsini; it is square, with round towers at the angles. Avezzano is on the main line from Rome to Castellammare Adriatico; a branch railway diverges to Roccasecca, on the line from Naples to Rome. The Lago Fucino lies 11/2 m. to the east.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Avienus, Rufius Festus

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​AVIENUS, RUFIUS FESTUS, a Roman aristocrat and poet, of Vulsinii in Etruria, who flourished during the second half of the 4th century A.D. He was probably proconsul of Africa (366) and of Achaia (372). Avienus was a pagan and a staunch supporter of the old religion. He translated the Φαινόμενα of Aratus and paraphrased the Περιήγησις of Dionysius under the title of Descriptio Orbis Terrarum, both in hexameters. He also compiled a description, in iambic trimeters, of the coasts of the Mediterranean, Caspian and Black Seas in several books, of which only a fragment of the first is extant. He also epitomized Livy and Virgil’s Aeneid in the same metre, but these works are lost. Some minor poems are found under his name in anthologies, e.g. a humorous request to one Favianus for some pomegranates for medicinal purposes.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aversa

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​AVERSA, a town and episcopal see of Campania, Italy, in the province of Caserta, 151/2 m. S.S.W. by rail from Caserta, and 121/2 m. N. by rail from Naples, from which there is also an electric tramway. Pop. (1901) 23,477. Aversa was the first place in which the Normans settled, it being granted to them in 1027 for the help which they had given to Duke Sergius of Naples against Pandulf IV. of Capua. The Benedictine abbey of S. Lorenzo preserves a portal of the 11th century. There is also a large lunatic asylum, founded by Joachim Murat in 1813.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Averruncator

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​AVERRUNCATOR, a form of long shears used in arboriculture for “averruncating” or pruning off the higher branches of trees, &c. The word “averruncate” (from Lat. averruncare, to ward off, remove mischief) glided into meaning to “weed the ground,” “prune vines,” &c., by a supposed derivation from the Lat. ab, off, and eruncare, to weed out, and it was spelt “aberuncate” to suit this; but the New English Dictionary regards such a derivation as impossible.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Avianus

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​AVIANUS, a Latin writer of fables, placed by some critics in the age of the Antonines, by others as late as the 6th century A.D. He appears to have lived at Rome and to have been a heathen. The 42 fables which bear his name are dedicated to a certain Theodosius, whose learning is spoken of in most flattering terms. He may possibly be Macrobius Theodosius, the author of the Saturnalia; some think he may be the emperor of that name. Nearly all the fables are to be found in Babrius, who was probably Avianus’s source of inspiration, but as Babrius wrote in Greek, and Avianus speaks of having made an elegiac version from a rough Latin copy, probably a prose paraphrase, he was not indebted to the original. The language and metre are on the whole correct, in spite of deviations from classical usage, chiefly in the management of the pentameter. The fables soon became popular as a school-book. Promythia and epimythia (introductions and morals) and paraphrases, and imitations were frequent, such as the Novus Avianus of Alexander Neckam (12th century).
Editions.—Cannegieter (1731), Lachmann (1845), Fröhner (1862), ​Bährens in Poetae Latini Minores, Ellis (1887). See Müller, De Phaedri et Aviani Fabulis (1875); Unrein, De Aviani Aetate (1885); Hervieux, Les Fabulistes latins (1894); The Fables of Avian translated into Englyshe . . . by William Caxton at Westmynstre (1483).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Busiris

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​BUSIRIS, in a Greek legend preserved in a fragment of Pherecydes, an Egyptian king, son of Poseidon and Lyssianassa. After Egypt has been afflicted for nine years with famine, Phrasius, a seer of Cyprus, arrived in Egypt and announced that the cessation of the famine would not take place until a foreigner was yearly sacrificed to Zeus or Jupiter. Busiris commenced by sacrificing the prophet, and continued the custom by offering a foreigner on the altar of the god. It is here that Busiris enters into the circle of the myths and parerga of Heracles, who had arrived in Egypt from Libya, and was seized and bound ready to be killed and offered at the altar of Zeus in Memphis. Heracles burst the bonds which bound him, and, seizing his club, slew Busiris with his son Amphidamas and his herald Chalbes. ​This exploit is often represented on vase paintings from the 6th century B.C. and onwards, the Egyptian monarch and his companions being represented as negroes, and the legend is referred to by Herodotus and later writers. Although some of the Greek writers made Busiris an Egyptian king and a successor of Menes, about the sixtieth of the series, and the builder of Thebes, those better informed by the Egyptians rejected him altogether. Various esoterical explanations were given of the myth, and the name not found as a king was recognized as that of the tomb of Osiris. Busiris is here probably an earlier and less accurate Graecism than Osiris for the name of the Egyptian god Usiri, like Bubastis, Buto, for the goddesses Ubasti and Uto. Busiris, Bubastis, Buto, more strictly represent Pusiri, Pubasti, Puto, cities sacred to these divinities. All three were situated in the Delta, and would be amongst the first known to the Greeks. All shrines of Osiris were called P-usiri, but the principal city of the name was in the centre of the Delta, capital of the 9th (Busirite) nome of Lower Egypt; another one near Memphis (now Abusir) may have helped the formation of the legend in that quarter. The name Busiris in this legend may have been caught up merely at random by the early Greeks, or they may have vaguely connected their legend with the Egyptian myth of the slaying of Osiris (as king of Egypt) by his mighty brother Seth, who was in certain aspects a patron of foreigners. Phrasius, Chalbes and Epaphus (for the grandfather of Busiris) are all explicable as Graecized Egyptian names, but other names in the legend are purely Greek. The sacrifice of foreign prisoners before a god, a regular scene on temple walls, is perhaps only symbolical, at any rate for the later days of Egyptian history, but foreign intruders must often have suffered rude treatment at the hands of the Egyptians, in spite of the generally mild character of the latter.
See H. v. Gartringen, in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, for the evidence from the side of classical archaeology. (F. Ll. G.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Buskin

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​BUSKIN (a word of uncertain origin, existing in many European languages, as Fr. brousequin, Ital. borzacchino, Dutch brozeken, and Span, borceguí), a half-boot or high shoe strapped under the ankle, and protecting the shins; especially the thick-soled boot or cothurnus in the ancient Athenian tragedy, used to increase the stature of the actors, as opposed to the soccus, “sock,” the light shoe of comedy. The term is thus often used figuratively of a tragic style.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bushbuck

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​BUSHBUCK (Boschbok,) the South African name of a medium-sized red antelope (q.v.), marked Female Bushbuck.with white lines and spots, belonging to a local race of a widely spread species, Tragelaphus scriptus. The males alone have rather small, spirally twisted horns. There are several allied species, sometimes known as harnessed antelopes, which are of a larger size. Some of these such as the situtunga (T. spekei) have the hoofs elongated for walking on swampy ground, and hence have been separated as Limnotragus.