Guy Wetmore Carryl was an American author of humorous as well as serious verses, realistic and satirical fiction.
Background
Guy Wetmore Carryl was born on March 4, 1873 in New York City, New York, United States; the son of Charles Edward and Mary (Wetmore) Carryl. His father, a railroad director and member of the New York Stock Exchange, was himself the author of several volumes of fiction.
Education
Carryl attended the Cutler School and Columbia College, from which he graduated in 1895. While in college he wrote plays for amateur performance and was noted for his handsome looks, good manners, literary facility, wit, and zestful enjoyment of life.
Career
Carryl got his start in journalism as early as 1893 with a memorably vivid description in the New York Times of Edwin Booth's last hours. Upon his graduation he joined the staff of Munsey's Magazine, was promoted to managing editor, and in 1896 went to Paris as representative of Harper & Brothers. He remained in Paris until 1902, writing for Life, Outing, Munsey's, and Collier's, and learning intimately the ways of the foreign colony in the city. On his return to the United States he made his home at Swampscott, Massachussets. Early in 1904 his bungalow burned. Carryl contracted rheumatic grip from exposure while fighting the fire, blood poisoning set in, and he died in the Roosevelt Hospital, New York City, in his thirty-second year.
The literary career thus abruptly terminated seemed to his contemporaries to be of unusual promise. It began properly in 1898 with Fables for the Frivolous (with Apologies to La Fontaine), a volume of graceful light verse dedicated to his father. The tripping lines and genial, mildly cynical humor, aided by Peter Newell's illustrations, were well received; and its author followed it with two volumes in similar vein, Mother Goose for Grown-Ups (1900) and Grimm Tales Made Gay (1902). Time has not completely faded the humor of these verses. In 1903 Carryl turned to fiction with The Lieutenant-Governor, his most substantial book. It is temperately realistic and satirical, and the description and dialogue, as in his other fiction, are manipulated deftly. Zut and Other Parisians (1903) is a collection of short stories. Paris is also the background of The Transgression of Andrew Vane (1904), a story of blackmail with an incredible denouement, well enough written to attract critical attention when it was published. After his death two more volumes appeared: Far from the Maddening Girls (1904), a rather slight novel, and The Garden of Years (1904), which contains his serious verse. The title poem is autobiographical.
Guy Carryl died in 1904 at age 31 at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. His death was thought to be a result of illness contracted from exposure while fighting a fire at his house a month earlier.