Dorothy Parker
As the wittiest member of the smart set, Dorothy Parker embodied everything that was glamorous, smart, and sparkling about New York in the 1920s. As part of the inner circle of the famed Algonquin Round Table, she traded wisecracks and opinions with the sharpest literary minds of the day, making her nearly as famous for her witticisms as she was for her writing.
In one remarkable decade, the 1920s, American women dropped their Victorian pasts in the dust. Their motto was "Anything goes" and they meant it. This new attitude led many conservatives to believe that civilization was coming to an end. But in fact, it was just beginning and Dorothy Parker's words gave meaning to a complex and emotionally difficult time. Her verses, which caught the country's elite, so-called sophisticates by storm were considered brusque, bitter, and unwomanly by her detractors. And they were.
Although a romantic in many ways, Parker was better known for her devastating cynicism, always couched in the most clever of word-work. Responsible for the famous line, "Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses," Parker made a name for herself as the drama critic for Vanity Fair. (She was fired for her sharp-tongued reviews and once dryly noted that Katharine Hepburn "ran the gamut of emotions from A to B.") She went on to write book reviews for the New Yorker, all the while working on her own short stories and poems. Her most famous story The Big Blonde, won the prestigious O. Henry Award in 1929.
Excerpted from the book Cool Women with permission of publisher, Girl Press.
Learn More About Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker's New York
http://www.dorothyparkernyc.com/
Read about Dorothy's life and childhood in New York City, the places she lived, where she visited, and even hear her read some of her writings.
Dorothy Parker Biography
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/authors/parker.html
Read Dorothy Parker's poems online at this site from the University of Toronto.
Encyclopedia Brittanica: Dorothy Parker
http://women.eb.com/women/articles/Parker_Dorothy.html
Learn more about Dorothy Parker's life and career from Encyclopedia Brittanica.
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