Wolcott, Oliver (b. Nov. 20, 1726, Windsor, Conn.—d. Dec. 1, 1797, Litchfield, Conn., U.S.) American public official. He was a member of the Connecticut council (1771-86), a delegate to the Continental Congress (1775-76,1778,1780-84), and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He raised a local militia to fight in the American Revolution and led troops in the defense of Connecticut (1779). As a commissioner of northern Indian affairs, he negotiated the Treaty of Fort Stanwix. He served as lieu¬ tenant governor (1787-96) and later governor (1796-97) of Connecticut.
wolf Any of three extant species of canine. The gray, or timber, wolf {Canis lupus ) is the ancestor of all domestic dogs. It once had the largest distribution of any mammal except human beings, but it is now found primarily in Canada, Alaska, the Balkans, and Russia. Wolves are intel¬ ligent and social. Their primary prey are deer, moose, and caribou, though they feed on many smaller animals as well. Because wolves have killed livestock, they have been persecuted by farmers and ranchers. A male gray wolf may be 7 ft (2 m) long and weigh up to 175 lb (80 kg); it is the largest living wild canid. Gray wolves live in hierarchical packs whose territories cover at least 38 sq mi (100 sq km) and hunt mostly at night. The much smaller red wolf (C. rufus), once widespread in the south- central U.S., has been bred in captivity and reintroduced. The Abyssinian wolf (C. simensis) of Ethiopia was formerly considered a jackal. See also DIRE WOLF.
Wolf \'volf,\ English Vwulf\, Christa orig. Christa Ihlenfeld (b.
March 18, 1929, Landsberg an der Warthe, Ger.) German novelist, essay¬
ist, and screenwriter. She was reared in a middle-class, pro-Nazi family; after Germany’s defeat in 1945, she moved with her family to East Ger¬ many. Her work reflects her experiences during World War II and her postwar life in a communist state. Her novels include Divided Heaven (1963), which brought her political favour; The Quest for Christa T. (1968), severely attacked in East Germany; A Model Childhood (1976); Cassandra (1983), her most widely read book, linking nuclear and patri¬ archal power; and What Remains (1990), on government surveillance and her own links to the East German secret police.
Wolf W61f\, Hugo (Filipp Jakob) (b. March 13, 1860, Windis- chgraz, Austria—d. Feb. 22, 1903, Vienna) Austrian composer. He entered the Vienna Conservatory at age 15, but, as a rabid Wagnerian, he lost patience with his teachers’ conservatism and soon left. By age 18 he probably had contracted the syphilis that would make him mentally unstable and eventually kill him. His volatile personality made it difficult for him to keep private students. As a critic (1884-87), he attracted atten¬ tion for his vituperative comments. His productivity came in bursts; in 1888-89 he produced the remarkable songs of the Morike Lieder, the Eichendorff Lieder, the Goethe Lieder, and much of the Spanish Songbook —more than half his total output. After beginning the Italian Songbook in 1891, he wrote nothing for three years, then quickly com¬ posed the opera Der Corregidor (1896) and finished the Italian Songbook (1896). In 1897 he suffered a complete breakdown, and he thereafter lived largely in an asylum.
wolf spider Name that originally referred to a species of southern European spider {Lycosa tarentula ) but now refers to more than 175 spi¬ der species (family Lycosidae) found in North America, Europe, and north of the Arctic Circle. The body of L. tarentula, the largest species, is about 1 in. (2.5 cm) long. Most species have a long, broad, hairy brown body; stout, long legs; and strong, prominent jaws. Wolf spiders chase and pounce upon their prey, hunting mostly at night. Most species build a silk-lined, tubular nest in the ground, which they dig with their heavy front legs. A few species spin webs. The bite of L. tarentula produces no ill effects in humans.
Wolfe, Elsie de See Elsie de Wolfe
Wolfe Vwulf\, James (b. Jan. 2,
Sept. 13, 1759, Quebec) British army commander. After a distinguished military career in Europe, in 1758 he helped lead Gen. Jeffery Amherst’s successful expedition against the French on Cape Breton Island. In 1759 he was appointed commander of the British army on its mission to capture Quebec from the French. In the ensuing Battle of Quebec, he defeated the French in a battle last¬ ing less than an hour. Wounded twice early in the battle, he died of a third wound, but not before he knew Que¬ bec had fallen to his troops.
Wolfe Vwulf\, Thomas (Clay¬ ton) (b. Oct. 3, 1900, Asheville,
N.C., U.S.—d. Sept. 15, 1938, Balti¬ more, Md.) U.S. writer. Wolfe stud¬ ied at the University of North Carolina and in 1923 moved to New York City, where he taught at New York University while writing plays.
Look Homeward, Angel (1929), his first and best-known novel, and Of Time and the River (1935) are thinly veiled autobiographies. In The Story of a Novel (1936) he describes his close working relationship with the editor Maxwell Perkins, who helped him shape the chaotic manuscripts for his first two books into publishable form. His short stories were collected in From Death to Morning (1935). After his death at age 37 from tuberculosis, the novels The Web and the Rock (1939) and You Can’t Go Home Again { 1940) were among the works extracted from the manuscripts he left.
Wolfe, Tom orig. Thomas Kennerly Wolfe, Jr. (b. March 2, 1930, Richmond, Va., U.S.) U.S. journalist and novelist. He earned a doc¬ torate from Yale University and then wrote for newspapers and worked as a magazine editor, becoming known as a proponent of New Joumal-
"The Miraculous Draft of Fishes," tem¬ pera on panel by Konrad Witz, 1444; in the Museum of Art and History, Geneva
©MUSEE D'ART ET D'HISTOIRE, GENEVA; PHOTOGRAPH, WES SIZA
1727, Westerham, Kent, Eng.—d.
James Wolfe, painting attributed to J.S.C. Schaak; in the National Portrait Gallery, London
COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Wolff ► Woman's Christian Temperance Union I 2071
ism, the application of fiction-writing techniques to journalism. The Elec¬ tric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) chronicles the life of a traveling group of hippies. The Right Stuff (1919', film, 1983) examines the first U.S. astro¬ naut program. Other controversial nonfiction books attacked fashionable 1960s leftism, modern abstract art, and international architectural styles. His novel The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987; film, 1990), a novel of urban greed and corruption, was a best-seller. Wolfe’s second novel, A Man in Full, was published in 1998.
Wolff VvolfX, Christian, Freiherr (baron) von (b. Jan. 24, 1679, Breslau, Silesia—d. April 9, 1754, Halle, Prussia) German philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. He was educated at the universities of Bre¬ slau, Jena, and Leipzig and was a pupil of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. He wrote numerous works in theology, psychology, botany, and physics but is best known as a leading spokesman of German rationalism. His series of essays, all beginning under the title Rational Ideas, covered many sub¬ jects and expounded Leibniz’s theories in popular form.
Wolfflin Vvoelf-lin\, Heinrich (b. June 21, 1864, Basel, Switz.—d. July 19, 1945, Basel) Swiss art historian. He was educated at the univer¬ sities of Basel, Berlin, and Munich, and his doctoral thesis already showed the approach he was later to develop: an analysis of form based on a psy¬ chological interpretation of the creative process. His chief work, Prin¬ ciples of Art History (1915), synthesized his ideas into a complete aesthetic system that was to become of great importance in art criticism. He eschewed the popular anecdotal approach and emphasized the formal stylistic analysis of drawing, composition, light, colour, subject matter, and other pictorial elements as they were handled similarly by the paint¬ ers of a particular period or national school.