The ruins of Fountains Abbey, a Cistercian monastery founded in the 12th century, near Ripon, North Yorkshire, England
ANDYWILUAMS
Abbey, Edward (b. Jan. 29, 1927, Home, Pa., U.S.—d. March 14, 1989, Oracle, Ariz.) U.S. writer and environmentalist. Abbey worked as a park ranger and fire lookout for the National Park Service. He wrote a number of volumes on consumer culture’s encroachment on the Ameri¬ can wilderness. Desert Solitaire (1968), one of his best-known, is set in southeastern Utah. His 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang , describ¬ ing the exploits of a band of guerrilla environmentalists, inspired numer¬ ous real-life activists.
‘Abbas I, detail of a painting by the Mughal school of Jahangir, c. 1620; in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
COURTESY OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, FREER GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, D.C.
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Abbey Theatre ► 'Abd al-Samad I 3
Abbey Theatre Dublin theatre. It developed from the Irish Literary Theatre, founded in 1899 by William Butler Yeats and Lady Augusta Gre¬ gory to foster Irish drama. After moving the troupe to a renovated the¬ atre on Abbey Street in 1904, they codirected its productions with John Millington Synge, staged their own plays, and commissioned works by Sean O'Casey and others. Important premieres included Synge’s The Play¬ boy of the Western World (1907) and O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars (1926). The Abbey became the first state-subsidized theatre in the English- speaking world in 1924. A fire destroyed the original playhouse in 1951, and a new theatre was built in 1966.
Abbott, Berenice (b. July 17, 1898, Springfield, Ohio, U.S.—d. Dec. 9, 1991, Monson, Maine) U.S. photographer. She left the American Mid¬ west in 1918 to study in New York City, Paris, and Berlin. In Paris she became an assistant to Man Ray and Eugene Atget. In 1925 she set up her own studio and made portraits of Parisian expatriates, artists, writers, and collectors. She retrieved and catalogued Atget’s prints and negatives after his death. In the 1930s she photographed New York’s neighbourhoods for the WPA Federal Art Project, documenting its changing architecture; many of the photographs were published in Changing New York (1939).
Abbott, Bud; and Costello, Lou orig. William Alexander Abbott and Louis Francis Cristillo (respectively b. Oct. 2, 1899, Asbury Park, N.J., U.S.—d. April 24, 1974, Woodland Hills, Calif.; b. March 6, 1906, Paterson, N.J.—d. March 3, 1959, East Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. comedy team, prominent in vaudeville from 1931 and on radio from 1938. Their first successful film, Buck Privates (1941), was followed by more than 30 other slapstick comedies, with Abbott playing a bullying straight man to Costello’s childlike buffoon. Their famous routine “Who’s on First?” was first performed in the film The Naughty Nineties (1945). The collaboration ended in 1957.
Abbott, George (Francis) (b. June 25, 1887, Forestville, N.Y., U.S.—d. Jan. 31, 1995, Miami Beach, Fla.) U.S. theatre director, pro¬ ducer, and playwright. In 1913 he began acting on Broadway, and he soon turned to writing and directing plays, achieving his first of many hits with The Fall Guy (1925). He also wrote, directed, or produced many popular musicals, including The Boys from Syracuse (1938), Pal Joey (1940), Where’s Charley (1948), Wonderful Town (1953), and Damn Yankees (1955). He was active in the theatre into the 1980s, directing a revival of On Your Toes at age 95.
Abbott, Grace (b. Nov. 17, 1878, Grand Island, Neb., U.S.—d. June 19, 1939, Chicago, Ill.) U.S. social worker, public administrator, educa¬ tor, and reformer. She graduated from Grand Island College and did gradu¬ ate work at the University of Nebraska and the University of Chicago, receiving a Ph.D. in political science in 1909. In 1908 she began work¬ ing at Jane Addams’s Hull House in Chicago, where she cofounded the Immigrants’ Protective League. As director of the U.S. Children’s Bureau (1921-34), she fought to end child labour through legislation and restric¬ tions on federal contracts. She worked to win public approval of a con¬ stitutional amendment prohibiting child labour; though submitted to the states in 1924, the amendment was never ratified. Her best-known book is The Child and the State (2 vol., 1938).
Abbott, Lyman (b. Dec. 18, 1835, Roxbury, Mass., U.S.—d. Oct. 22, 1922, New York, N.Y.) U.S. minis¬ ter. Son of the writer Jacob Abbott (1803-79), he left law practice to study theology and was ordained in 1860. He became editor of the Illus¬ trated Christian Weekly in 1870 and editor in chief of Henry Ward Beech¬ er’s Christian Union in 1881. In 1888 he succeeded to Beecher’s pul¬ pit in Brooklyn. A leading exponent of the Social Gospel movement, he sought to apply Christianity to social and industrial problems, rejecting both socialism and laissez-faire eco¬ nomics. On other problems Abbott presented the viewpoint of liberal evangelical Protestantism.
Abbott, Sir John (Joseph Caldwell) (b. March 12, 1821, St.
Andrews, Lower Canada—d. Oct. 30, 1893, Montreal, Que., Can.) Cana¬
dian prime minister (1891-92). Educated at McGill University in Mon¬ treal, he became a lawyer in 1847 and was made queen’s counsel in 1862. He was dean of McGill University law school from 1855 to 1880. After serving in the legislative assembly (1857-74, 1880-87), he was appointed to the Senate and became government leader. Upon the death of John Macdonald, he became the compromise choice for prime minister. Ill health forced his resignation in 1892.
abbreviation Shortened form of a written word or phrase used in place of the whole. Abbreviations began to proliferate in the 19th century and have been prevalent since; they are employed to reduce the time required for writing or speaking, especially when referring to the myriad new organizations, bureaucratic entities, and technological products typical of industrial societies. An abbreviation can now easily become a word, either as an initialism in which the letters are pronounced individually (e.g., TV or FBI) or as an acronym in which the letters are combined into syllables (e.g., scuba, laser, or NAFTA).
ABC in full American Broadcasting Co. Major U.S. television network. It began when the expanding national radio network NBC split into the separate Red and Blue networks in 1928. To avoid a communi¬ cations monopoly, NBC was forced to sell the Blue network in 1941. Its buyer, Edward J. Noble, maker of Life-Savers candies, gave the company its present name. After merging with United Paramount Theaters in 1953, ABC expanded into the emerging television industry and soon became one of the three top networks. It specialized in sports broadcasting and developed the instant replay in 1961. It was bought by Capital Cities Communications in 1985 and by the Walt Disney Co. in 1995.
‘Abd al-‘Az7z ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Faysal Al Sa ud See
Ibn Sa‘0d
‘Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan N.ab-dol-'mal-ik-.ib-on-mar-'wanV (b. 646/647, Medina, Arabia—d. Oct. 705, Damascus) Fifth caliph (685-705) of the Umayyad dynasty. c Abd al-Malik was forced to flee his hometown of Medina during an uprising against Umayyad rule in 683. Two years later he succeeded to the caliphate and—with the help of his infamous lieutenant al-Hajjaj ibn YOsuf —began a seven-year campaign to defeat all rebellions against the Umayyads and reunify the Muslim world. He resumed the conquest of North Africa, winning the Berbers to his side and capturing Carthage (697) from the Byzantine Empire. His good rela¬ tions with the clergy of Medina led many to abandon their opposition to the Umayyads. He made Arabic the language of government throughout his domains, struck Islamic gold coins to replace Byzantine ones, and built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.