Background
He was bornon May 27, 1862 in Yonkers, New York. His father Francis Nehemiah Bangs was a lawyer in New York City, as was his brother, Francis S. Bangs.
He was bornon May 27, 1862 in Yonkers, New York. His father Francis Nehemiah Bangs was a lawyer in New York City, as was his brother, Francis S. Bangs.
In 1883 he graduated from Columbia College. Here he was editor of Acta Columbiana, succeeding Nicholas Murray Butler.
It was in 1884 that as associate editor of Life he held his first professional editorial position. He remained in this capacity until 1888, when he was invited by Henry Mills Alden to join the staff of Harper's Magazine, and for eleven years he had charge of its humorous department and that of the Bazaar. He also wrote the literary notes and many articles, besides contributing to other periodicals. In 1899 he assumed editorship of Harper's Weekly, and the same year became the first editor of Munsey's Weekly, resigning, however, before the year was up.
His earliest book, The Lorgnette (with S. W. Van Schaick), was published in 1886. Thereafter, up to 1910, he published over thirty volumes of humor and verse. Perhaps the best known of these are Tiddledywink Tales (1891), Coffee and Repartee (1893), The Idiot (1895), and A Houseboat on the Styx (1895). From the middle eighties until 1904 he lived in Yonkers, and during part of that period was vice-president of the board of education. In 1894 he ran for mayor, his defeat enabling him to write one of his most amusing travesties, Three Weeks in Politics (1894). In 1901 he went to Cuba and wrote an influential book on Cuban affairs, Uncle Sam, Trustee (1902). The financial difficulties of Harper & Brothers led him, in 1903, to become editor of the New Metropolitan Magazine, although he continued to write for Harper's Weekly. In June 1904, he took editorial charge of Puck, and it was during this year that he produced Lady Teazle, with Lillian Russell as Lady Teazle. Later he produced a musical fantasy. These two plays were the extent of his dramatic ventures. Not until 1907 did he really find himself.
Early in the nineties he had lectured on The Evolution of a Humorist, to which he later added the subtitle, from Adam to Ade. Now, breaking away from his editorial moorings, he left Yonkers for Ogunquit, and became a free lance and lecturer.
During the activities of the American Committee for Devastated France, he lectured and labored without stint in its behalf, and was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
He was tall, spare, unaffected, a thorough gentleman in mind and bearing, with a carrying voice, fund of anecdotes and charm of manner, which made him a humorous speaker of rare distinction and taste. He was a man of warm sympathies. He was an enormous worker, and at one time wrote under as many as ten assumed names. Early in his career he was in the habit of writing twenty-five jokes a day, just for relaxation. The whimsicalities created by him during his lifetime were of astonishing variety.
He married Agnes Lawson Hyde, March 3, 1886, by whom he had four sons. His second wife, Mary Blakeney Gray, he married April 27, 1904.