This set contains entries on 450 novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, dancers, choreographers, actors, directors, filmmakers, singers, composers and musicians. Each entry (many of them illustrated) covers the person's works, achievements, and professional career in a thorough essay and offers interesting facts, such as the fact that Leon Bakst was expelled from the Imperial Academy of Art in St Petersburg after he painted the Virgin and the disciples as Jewish peasants.