Biography
Browne was born in Waterford, Maine. He began life as a compositor and occasional contributor to the daily and weekly journals. In 1858, he published in The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio) the first of the "Artemus Ward" series, which, in a collected form, achieved great popularity in both America and England. In 1860, he became editor of Vanity Fair, a humorous New York weekly, which proved a failure. About the same time, he began to appear as a lecturer and, by his droll and eccentric humor, attracted large audiences.
"Artemus Ward" was the favorite author of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. Before presenting "The Emancipation Proclamation" to his Cabinet, Lincoln read to them the latest episode, "Outrage in Utiky", also known as High-Handed Outrage at Utica.
Ward is also said to have inspired Mark Twain when Ward performed in Virginia City, Nevada. Legend has it that, following Ward's stage performance, he, Mark Twain, and Dan De Quille were taking a drunken rooftop tour of Virginia City until a town constable threatened to blast all three of them with a shotgun loaded with rock salt.
In 1866, Ward visited England, where he became exceedingly popular both as a lecturer and as a contributor to Punch. In the spring of the following year, Ward's health gave way and he died of tuberculosis at Southampton on March 6, 1867.
After initially being buried at Kensal Green Cemetery, Ward's remains were removed to the United States on May 20, 1868.
Read more about this topic: Charles Farrar Browne
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)