HISTORY/ POPULAR CULTURE
The Timeless Wit and Wisdom of Dorothy Parker
She brushed her teeth, then sharpened her tongue…
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Even if you don’t immediately recognise her name, you will certainly be acquainted with the incisive witticisms of acclaimed writer, poet, satirist, screenwriter, and critic, Dorothy Parker. Indeed, many of her clever one liners and sagacious sayings have become a part of our cultural lexicon. She was a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, a New York- based circle of writers famed for their wit, wisecracks, and wordplay, and she remains an important figure in American modernist literature.
Dorothy Parker (nee Rothschild) was born in her parent’s summer home in New Jersey in 1893, the daughter of immigrant parents. She had a troubled childhood; her mother died when Dorothy was just five years old, and her relationship with her abusive father and his new wife, Eleanor Lewis, was fraught and unhappy.
Perhaps as a means of diversion from her discontented family life, Dorothy began writing poetry and, at the age of 21, she sold her first poem to Vanity Fair. The following year, she was hired as an editor at Vogue and, another two years after that, she was appointed Vanity Fair’s drama critic, taking over from P.G. Wodehouse. This appointment made her the first female critic on Broadway.
Dorothy’s tenure as Vanity Fair’s drama critic lasted two years; she was dismissed in 1920, her caustic comments and biting critiques having alienated many powerful producers. Vanity Fair continued to publish some of her writing, however, along with other publications such as The American Mercury, Ladies’ Home Journal, and The New Yorker.
Dorothy’s first book of poetry, Enough Rope, was published in 1926 and met with positive and enthusiastic reviews. Two more poetry collections, Sunset Gun (1928) and Death and Taxes (1931) followed over the next few years, as well as two short story collections, Laments for the Living (1930) and After Such Pleasures (1933).
Following their 1934 marriage, Dorothy and her husband, actor/screenwriter Alan Campbell, (her second husband, and also her third! — they divorced in 1947 and remarried in 1950), moved to Hollywood, where they both signed with…
