Background

Donald Robert Perry Marquis was born on July 29, 1878, in Walnut, Illinois, United States to the family of a doctor James Stuart Marquis and Virginia Elizabeth Whitmore.

Education

Don Marquis attended Walnut High School from where he graduated in 1894. Thereafter he attended Knox Academy, a now-defunct preparatory program run by Knox College, in 1896 but after three months, he left the institution. He also studied at Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in 1899-1900.

Career

Don Marquis started his newspaper career with setting type and writing columns for small-town weeklies. For a brief period, he worked as a reporter in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. From 1902 to 1907, he worked on the editorial board of the Atlanta Journal and contributed a number of editorials. In 1907, he took a job with Joel Chandler Harris as an associate editor of the New Uncle Remus’s Magazine. He got nationwide recognition for his work in this magazine. In 1909, Marquis shifted to New York where he worked for several newspapers. In 1912, he served for “The Evening Sun”, a New York-based newspaper. For the next eleven years, he edited a daily column “The Sun Dial”. After leaving “The Evening Sun”, he joined “New York Tribune” which was later renamed as the “New York Herald Tribune”. He got recognition for his daily column “The Tower” published in this paper. Within a few months, the name of the column was changed to “The Lantern”. Initially, Marquis enjoyed working at the “Herald Tribune”, but gradually he started feeling exhausted. Unable to bear work pressure, he left the paper. After leaving “Herald Tribune”, he wrote a weekly column for Collier’s magazine for several years. This magazine also published his short stories and opinion pieces regularly. He used to write regular columns and short stories for several newspapers and magazines like “Saturday Evening Post”, “Harper’s”, “Scribner’s”, “Golden Book” and “Cosmopolitan”.

In 1916, Don Marquis introduced Archy, a fictional cockroach character whom he described as a free-verse poet in its previous life. Archy supposedly used to leave poems on his typewriter by jumping on the keys and used only lower-case letters because he could not operate the shift key on the typewriter. Beside Archy, he also introduced the character of Mehitabel, a fictional cat and Archy’s best friend. The other characters that he presented were Pete the Pup, Clarence the ghost and Warty Bliggins and an egomaniacal toad.

After his successful stint as a columnist in newspapers and magazines, Marquis pursued a career as a playwright. The first play that he authored was “The Old Soak” which received success on the stage. He also tried his hands at writing scripts for films. He wrote the script of 1932 successful film ‘Skippy’ and several other movies. Two of his popular books “The Old Soak” and “ The Cruise of the Jasper B” were made into films. After returning to New York, he spent most of his time at Players, a private club. After living a period of self-imposed exile, Marquis published several volumes of his works. During this time, he published his 1935 volume “Archy Does His Part” which is the third and final collection of Archy and Mehitabel series. Before his death, he was working on an autobiographical novel titled “Sons of the Puritans”. He left the responsibility of completion of this work to his friend “Kit” Morley.

Among Marquis’ published collections of humorous poetry, satirical prose, and plays are Danny’s Own Story (1912), Dreams and Dust (1915), Hermione (1916), The Old Soak (1916; made into a play, 1926), Sonnets to a Red Haired Lady (1922), The Dark Hours (1924), and Out of the Sea (1927). After Marquis’ death archy and mehitabel (1927) was combined with several sequels into an omnibus, the lives and times of archy and mehitabel (1940), illustrated by George Herriman. In 1957 some of the Archy and Mehitabel stories were made into a musical by George Kleinsinger and Joe Darion. The Best of Don Marquis (1939) has an introduction by Marquis’ friend Christopher Morley.

Don Marquis died on December 29, 1937, in New York City of a stroke after suffering three other strokes that partly disabled him.

Achievements

• Don Marquis was one of the most quoted writers in Manhattan in the 1920s, when New York’s literary scene was reaching its zenith. His newspaper contemporaries were Christopher Morley, Heywood Broun and Franklin Pierce Adams (F.P.A.), but only Adams challenged Marquis for the heart and soul of New Yorkers of that era. The great humor writers who came soon afterward - Robert Benchly, Dorothy Parker, James Thurber - considered Marquis a New York icon.
  
  To honor his memory, the United States Navy christened a Liberty ship, the USS Don Marquis on August 23, 1943.
  
  In 2016 Don Marquis was indicted to the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Archyology II: (The Final Dig)

    (In this second and final volume “composed” by archy, the ...)

    1998
  • Archyology

    (A whimsical and sophisticated sage, archy the cockroach e...)

    1996
  • The Revolt of the Oyster

    (From his hut in the tree-top Probably Arboreal looked laz...)

    1922
  • The Cruise of the Jasper B

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923 and repr...)

    1916
  • Chapters for the Orthodox

    (Tales of mysteries and miracles performed in an off-hand ...)

    1934
  • The Best of Archy and Mehitabel

    (A selection of the best of the hilarious free-verse poems...)

    2012
  • Archy and Mehitabel

    (This beloved illustrated classic tells the tale of Archy,...)

    1927
  • When the Turtles Sing and Other Unusual Tales

    (A collection of short-stories from Marquis, American news...)

    1928
  • The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel

    (Of all the literary genres, humor has the shortest shelf ...)

    1940
  • Archys Life Of Mehitabel 1933
  • Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers 1916
  • Archy Does His Part 1935
  • Noah an' Jonah an' Cap'n John Smith 1921
  • The Old Soak, And, Hail and Farewell 1921
  • Dreams & Dust 1915
  • Prefaces 1919
  • Poems and Portraits 1922
  • Carter and Other People 1921
  • Danny's Own Story 1912
  • Out of the Sea: A Play in Four Acts 1927
  • Master of the Revels 1934
  • Sun Dial Time 1936

Religion

According to Don Marquis, his parents were "Scottish Calvinists who believed in Infant Damnation, Calomel, and Scotch Whiskey." Being religiously undogmatic Marquis repudiated this faith.

Views

Quotations: "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you."

"A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists."

"Our is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it."

"It takes all sorts of people to make the underworld."

"Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue."

"There is nothing so habit-forming as money."

"Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever."

"When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?'"

"Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday."

"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you."

"Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun."

"Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo."

"An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it."

"The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race."

"A hypocrite is a person who - but who isn't?"

"Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes."

"The humorist is a philosopher who breaks the sad news gently because he is so sorry for the world."

Membership

• National Institute of Arts and Letters , United States

• American Academy , United States

Personality

Don Marquis was a passionate smoker. On most of his photos, he appeared holding a cigar.

Quotes from others about the person

• "A very funny man, his product rich and satisfying, full of sad beauty, bawdy adventure, political wisdom, and wild surmise; full of pain and jollity, full of exact and inspired writing." - E. B. White
  
  "This, you immediately see, deserves pause. And it is not impossible that one of the falsehoods life will always tell about Mr. Marquis is that this proud and sensitive mind, one of the most serious and gifted poets of our time, was a man who wrote mainly about an old soak, an alley cat, and a cockroach. And, just as Don broke loose into savage candor, years ago, in that fine poem A Gentleman of Fifty Sililoquizes, so I like archy best where he sparkles self-respecting indignation. The roach rejects the idea of "archy week" and refuses to march down Fifth Avenue at the head of a procession. He is a serious artist, he cries, he does not exploit himself nor permit himself to be exploited." - Christopher Morley
  
  "He is unquestionably the cleverest of our ephemeral philosophers." - Christopher Morley

Connections

In 1909, Don Marquis married Reina Melcher, a freelance writer and novelist. They had a son, Robert and a daughter Barbara. Reina died on December 2, 1923.

In 1926, he married actress Marjorie Potts Vonnegut who passed away in her sleep on October 2, 1936.

Father:

James Stuart Marquis

Mother:

Virginia Elizabeth Whitmore

late wife:

Reina Melcher

Son:

Robert Marquis

dauhter:

Barbara Marquis

late wife:

Marjorie Potts Vonnegut

Friend:

Christopher Morley

Friend:

Elwyn Brooks White

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 166 This volume of Contemporary Authors contains biographical information on approximately 300 modern writers.
  1998
• O Rare Don Marquis This book is a Don Marquis' biography.
  1962
• Don Marquis
  1981
• Encyclopedia of American Humorists First published in 1988, this book contains entries on famous American Humorists. Humor has been present in American literature, from the beginning, and has developed characteristics that reflect the American character, both regional and national. Although American literature was, in the past, treated as inferior to British literature, there has always been a large popular audience for the genre, which this book shows.
  2017
• America's Humor: From Poor Richard to Doonesbury Shows that forms of humor considered typically American are products of specific historical events from exploration and settlement to the growth of countercultures, and spotlights famous and less-celebrated creators of comedy.
  1980