HISTORY/ POPULAR CULTURE
The Timeless Wit and Wisdom of Dorothy Parker
She brushed her teeth, then sharpened her tongue…
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…
