Matthison
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
EDITH WYNNE, actress; born in Birmingham, England, in 1875, she was educated in King Edward's Grammar School and Midland Institute, and began at 21 to appear in musical comedy, lat later joining Ben Greet's company, playing leading parts in "The Three Musketeers" and "Money." Created title rôle in "Everyman," and has appeared in Greek and mystery plays, old English comedies, and modern plays. In the United States in 1904 she appeared in Goldsmith's "She Stoops to Conquer," and she has done good work in the plays of her husband, CHARLES RANN KENNEDY (q. v.). MATTO GROSSO (mättö gros'sö) ("dense forest"), an inland state of Brazil, bordering ing on Bolivia, second to Ama zonas alone, in size and sparseness of population; area, 532,683 square miles; pop. about 125,000, nearly all Indians and blacks. Within this vast territory several great rivers rise, including the Madeira and the Paraguay; but in most parts there is a scarcity of water during the dry season. The vegetation is generally scanty, grass, bush, and low trees covering the sandstone plateau; high trees and rich vegetation are confined to the river valleys. The chief products are maté, sugar cane, and rubber. The gold and diamonds which formerly constituted the wealth of Matto Grosso have been exhausted, and agriculture (insufficient for the wants of the state) and cattle raising, with the gathering of medicinal plants by the Indians, are now the principal industries. The capital is Guyabá. The former capital, Matto Grosso, on the Guaporé, greatly decayed with the gold mining industry.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Edith Wynne Matthison, 46 when Collier's wrote this in 1921, went on to teach and direct alongside her husband Charles Rann Kennedy in the United States, where she died in 1955; her Everyman, created in 1901, is remembered chiefly as a landmark in the modern revival of medieval drama. The Matto Grosso described here, with "pop. about 125,000, nearly all Indians and blacks," no longer exists as one unit: territory was carved off in the 1940s (the Guaporé country becoming Rondônia), and in 1977 the south was split away as the separate state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Far from being a scanty land of exhausted mines, Mato Grosso is now one of the world's great agricultural frontiers, Brazil's leading producer of soybeans and cattle, with several million inhabitants and the clearing of forest and cerrado a global environmental controversy. The old capital's name is now spelled Cuiabá, and it is a city of well over half a million.
Written for this edition, 2026.