Don Marquis

Don Marquis was an American humorist, journalist, and poet born on July 29, 1878, in Walnut, Illinois. He is remembered for the comic verse stories of archy and mehitabel, a cockroach poet and an alley cat that first appeared in his New York newspaper column.

Born Donald Robert Perry Marquis, he left school in his teens and worked at a series of newspapers in Illinois, Tennessee, and Georgia before settling in New York City. From 1912 to 1922 he wrote a daily column titled The Sun Dial for the New York Evening Sun, and afterward continued a similar column, The Lantern, at the New York Tribune.

Archy, a free-verse-writing cockroach said to leap onto the keys of Marquis's typewriter at night, debuted in The Sun Dial in 1916. Because the insect could not operate the shift key, the poems appeared without capital letters. Collected as archy and mehitabel in 1927, with two further volumes following, the books became a durable favorite of American readers and were illustrated in later editions by George Herriman of Krazy Kat.

Marquis also wrote novels, short stories, and Broadway plays, including The Old Soak, a 1922 comedy about a sentimental drinker. His later years were marked by personal loss and ill health; he suffered a series of strokes in the mid-1930s and died in New York City on December 29, 1937.

The name Don is most often a short form of Donald, derived from the Scottish Gaelic Domhnall, composed of elements meaning world and ruler, traditionally interpreted as world ruler. He used this masculine short form throughout his writing life.