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Dorothy Parker (1) (1893–1967)

Author of The Portable Dorothy Parker [1973 Deluxe Edition]

For other authors named Dorothy Parker, see the disambiguation page.

128+ Works 9,099 Members 116 Reviews 139 Favorited

About the Author

Poet and short story writer Dorothy Parker was born in New Jersey on August 22, 1893. When she was 5, her mother died and her father, a clothes salesman, remarried. Parker had a great antipathy toward her stepmother and refused to speak to her. She attended parochial school and Miss Dana's school show more in Morristown, New Jersey, for a brief time before dropping out at age 14. A voracious reader, she decided to pursue a career in literature. She began her career by writing verse as well as captions for a fashion magazine. During the years of her greatest fame, Dorothy Parker was known primarily as a writer of light verse, an essential member of the Algonquin Round Table, and a caustic and witty critic of literature and society. She is remembered now as an almost legendary figure of the 1920s and 1930s. Her reviews and staff contributions to three of the most sophisticated magazines of this century, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, and Esquire, were notable for their put-downs. For all her highbrow wit, however, Dorothy Parker was liberal, even radical, in her political views, and the hard veneer of brittle toughness that she showed to the world was often a shield for frustrated idealism and soft sensibilities. The best of her fiction is marked by a balance of ironic detachment and sympathetic compassion, as in "Big Blonde," which won the O. Henry Award for 1929 and is still her best-remembered and most frequently anthologized story. The best of Dorothy Parker is readily and compactly accessible in The Portable Dorothy Parker. Her own selection of stories and verse for the original edition of that compilation, published in 1944, remains intact in the revised edition, but included also are additional stories, reviews, and articles. Parker died of a heart attack at the age of 73 in 1967. In her will, she bequeathed her estate to the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. foundation. Following King's death, her estate was passed on to the NAACP. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Works by Dorothy Parker

The Portable Dorothy Parker [2006 Deluxe Edition] (2006) — Author — 1,443 copies
Complete Stories (1995) 1,019 copies
The Portable Dorothy Parker (1944) 502 copies
The Best of Dorothy Parker (1965) 370 copies
Complete Poems (1999) 312 copies
The Collected Dorothy Parker (2001) 265 copies
Enough Rope (1926) 201 copies
Big Blonde and Other Stories (1995) 188 copies
Laments for the Living (1930) 143 copies
Dorothy Parker Stories (1930) 125 copies
After Such Pleasures (1933) 116 copies
Sunset Gun (1928) 113 copies
Not So Deep As A Well (1937) 100 copies
Death and taxes (1931) 87 copies
The Custard Heart (2018) 69 copies
Constant Reader (1656) 61 copies
The Indispensable F. Scott Fitzgerald (1945) — Composer — 60 copies
A Star Is Born [1937 film] (1937) — Screenwriter — 58 copies
Candide: A Comic Operetta (1956) — Lyricist — 55 copies
The Ladies of the Corridor (1954) 51 copies
The Little Foxes [1941 film] (1941) — Screenwriter — 48 copies
La Soledad de Las Parejas (1989) 34 copies
Big Blonde {story} (2013) — Author — 27 copies
La vie à deux (1983) 24 copies
Il mio mondo è qui (1939) 18 copies
Je was geweldig (1983) 13 copies
Uomini che non ho sposato (2016) — Contributor — 13 copies
Comme une valse (1989) 12 copies
Dusk Before Fireworks (1996) 11 copies
Tanto vale vivere (1993) 11 copies
Parker: Selected Stories (2018) 8 copies
Cor de crema (1995) 8 copies
Hymnes à la haine (2002) 8 copies
Candide: Original 1956 Broadway Cast Recording (2003) — Lyricist — 7 copies
A Telephone Call (1928) 6 copies
Giochi di società (2013) 6 copies
Colgando de un hilo (2015) 5 copies
Here We Are 5 copies
Collected Works (1973) 5 copies
Die Geschlechter (1944) 4 copies
New Yorker Geschichten (2016) 4 copies
Spreekt u maar 3 copies
Contos de Dorothy Parker (2007) 3 copies
Here We Are {play} (1963) 2 copies
At Her Best (1940) 2 copies
Articles et critiques (2002) 2 copies
The Last Tea 2 copies
Big Blonde; Horsie (1995) 2 copies
Little Curtis 2 copies
The Fan [1949 film] (2013) — Writer — 1 copy
Trade Winds [1938 film] — Screenwriter — 1 copy
Suzy [1936 film] — Screenwriter — 1 copy
Mr. Durant 1 copy
Too Bad 1 copy
Horsie 1 copy
Cousin Larry 1 copy
Sentiment 1 copy
Lolita 1 copy
Story {poem} 1 copy
The Midnight Line (1999) 1 copy
The Waltz 1 copy

Associated Works

The Best American Short Stories of the Century (2000) — Contributor — 1,534 copies
50 Great Short Stories (1952) — Contributor — 1,216 copies
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (2005) — Contributor — 1,198 copies
Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink (2007) — Contributor — 526 copies
Most of the Most of S. J. Perelman (1958) — Foreword, some editions — 507 copies
Fifty Great American Short Stories (1965) — Contributor — 420 copies
Points of View: Revised Edition (1966) — Contributor — 404 copies
Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker (2000) — Contributor — 354 copies
Literature: The Human Experience (2006) — Contributor — 335 copies
75 Short Masterpieces: Stories from the World's Literature (1961) — Contributor — 289 copies
A Treasury of Short Stories (1947) — Contributor — 286 copies
A Subtreasury of American Humor (1941) — Contributor — 274 copies
24 Favorite One Act Plays (1958) — Contributor — 274 copies
The Treasury of American Short Stories (1981) — Contributor — 265 copies
Short Stories from The New Yorker, 1925 to 1940 (1940) — Contributor — 193 copies
This Is My Best (1942) — Contributor — 180 copies
Erotica: Women's Writing from Sappho to Margaret Atwood (1990) — Contributor — 168 copies
Twenty Grand Short Stories (1967) — Contributor — 155 copies
The Norton Book of Personal Essays (1997) — Contributor — 142 copies
The Pocket Book of Modern American Short Stories (1943) — Contributor — 139 copies
Short Stories from the Strand (1992) — Contributor — 135 copies
American Wits: An Anthology of Light Verse (2003) — Contributor — 131 copies
An Anthology of Famous American Stories (1953) — Contributor — 131 copies
Read With Me (1965) — Contributor — 128 copies
The Persephone Book of Short Stories (2012) — Contributor — 116 copies
The Penguin Book of Women's Humour (1996) — Contributor — 114 copies
Saboteur [1942 film] (1942) — Screenwriter — 93 copies
The Virago Book of Wicked Verse (1992) — Contributor — 82 copies
The Best American Humorous Short Stories (1945) — Contributor — 82 copies
The Folio Book of Comic Short Stories (1805) — Contributor — 71 copies
Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium (1656) — Contributor — 71 copies
Choice Words: Writers on Abortion (2020) — Contributor — 70 copies
Stories from The New Yorker, 1950 to 1960 (1958) — Contributor — 68 copies
American Christmas Stories (2021) — Contributor — 57 copies
The Vintage Book of American Women Writers (2011) — Contributor — 55 copies
The Virago Book of Wanderlust and Dreams (1998) — Contributor — 35 copies
Mothers and Daughters: An Anthology (1998) — Contributor — 32 copies
The Secret Self: A Century of Short Stories by Women (1995) — Contributor — 32 copies
An American Omnibus (1933) — Contributor — 31 copies
Women's Friendships: A Collection of Short Stories (1991) — Contributor — 22 copies
Arthurian Literature by Women: An Anthology (1999) — Contributor — 19 copies
Nonsenseorship (2006) — Contributor — 13 copies
American Short Stories, Vol.5, The Twentieth Century (1957) — Author, some editions — 11 copies
The Voice of the Poet: American Wits (2003) — Contributor — 10 copies
Great Tales of City Dwellers (1955) — Contributor — 8 copies
Something's Going On (2005) — Songwriter — 7 copies
The Fireside Treasury of Modern Humor (1963) — Contributor — 5 copies
The Best American Short Stories 1958 (1958) — Contributor — 5 copies
Teen-Age Treasury for Girls (1958) — Contributor — 5 copies
The Best from Cosmopolitan — Contributor — 4 copies
Strange Barriers (1955) — Contributor — 2 copies
Bedside Bedlam (Quick Reader 137) (1945) — Contributor — 2 copies
The Best of American Poetry [Audio] (1997) — Contributor — 1 copy
Modern British and American short stories (1982) — Contributor — 1 copy
Schöne Ferien — Contributor — 1 copy

Tagged

20th century (238) 20th century literature (43) Algonquin (48) Algonquin Round Table (64) American (255) American fiction (48) American literature (370) American poetry (53) anthology (1,217) classic (64) classics (110) collection (191) Dorothy Parker (175) drama (72) essays (497) fiction (1,954) Folio Society (139) food (85) humor (961) journalism (47) Library of America (91) literature (489) Modern Library (44) New York (66) New Yorker (145) non-fiction (257) own (95) paperback (47) poetry (1,367) read (96) reviews (45) satire (68) short fiction (105) short stories (2,242) short story (120) stories (161) to-read (635) unread (161) USA (75) women (79)

Common Knowledge

Canonical name
Parker, Dorothy
Legal name
Rothschild, Dorothy (birth name)
Other names
Dot
Dottie
Birthdate
1893-08-22
Date of death
1967-06-07
Burial location
NAACP Headquarters, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Gender
female
Nationality
USA
Birthplace
Long Branch, New Jersey, USA
Place of death
New York, New York, USA
Cause of death
heart attack
Places of residence
Morristown, New Jersey, USA
Hollywood, California, USA
New York, New York, USA
Education
convent
Occupations
journalist
writer
satirist
drama critic
screenwriter
poet (show all 8)
short story writer
columnist
Relationships
Rothschild, Martin (uncle)
Campbell, Alan (husband)
Hellman, Lillian (friend, executor)
Organizations
Algonquin Round Table
Vogue
Vanity Fair
The New Yorker
Paramount Pictures
Awards and honors
American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature ∙ 1959)
New Jersey Hall of Fame (2014)
Short biography
Dorothy Parker, née Rothschild, was born in the West End section of Long Branch, New Jersey, to J. Henry and Elizabeth Rothschild. Her mother died when she was four years old. She attended a Catholic grammar school and a finishing school in Morristown, NJ, and her formal education ended when she was 14.

In 1914, she sold her first poem to Vanity Fair. At age 22, she took an editorial job at Vogue, and continued to write poems for newspapers and magazines. In 1917, she joined Vanity Fair. That same year, she married Edwin P. Parker, a stockbroker, but they divorced in 1928.

S In 1919, she became a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, the informal gathering of writers who lunched at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. In 1922, Parker published her first short story and over the years, she contributed poetry, fiction and book reviews as the "Constant Reader" columnist.

In 1934, Parker married actor-writer Alan Campbell and the couple relocated to Los Angeles. They divorced in 1947, and remarried in 1950, but their relationship deteriorated.
She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1959 and was a visiting professor at California State College in Los Angeles in 1963. She returned to Manhattan and lived in the Volney Hotel on the Upper East Side for the last 15 years of her life.

Members

Discussions

Reviews

Short stories which I don’t align with. Well written
 
Flagged
vdt_melbourne | 15 other reviews | Nov 27, 2023 |
I was underwhelmed. "Big Blonde" was great, but many of the stories felt formulaic, cranked out and dated. The essays, reviews and letters were better, but even there, after awhile they became repetitious.
 
Flagged
lschiff | 9 other reviews | Sep 24, 2023 |
I enjoyed the author's reviews of plays, musicals, and books quite a bit, and also her letters. Her short stories were fine, although I hated every story that was told in the first person narrative aside from "Mrs. Hofstadter on Josephine Street". The poetry I mostly skipped, not because of any lack on the author's part but because poetry doesn't do anything for me; I just end up bored.
 
Flagged
blueskygreentrees | 9 other reviews | Jul 30, 2023 |
Definitely a personal point of view for her time, Parker was way ahead of her contemporaries.
 
Flagged
mykl-s | 2 other reviews | Jun 30, 2023 |

Lists

Awards

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Associated Authors

Marion Meade Editor, Introduction
Lillian Hellman Lyricist, Screenwriter, Author
Robert Carson Screenwriter
Jack Conway Director
Arthur Kober Screenwriter
W. Somerset Maugham Afterword, Introduction
Brendan Gill Introduction
Regina Barreca Introduction
Helen Smithson Illustrator
Mervyn Horder Introduction

Statistics

Works
128
Also by
70
Members
9,099
Popularity
#2,642
Rating
4.0
Reviews
116
ISBNs
222
Languages
10
Favorited
139
Touchstones
190

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