Marquis, Don

Related Category: American Literature: Biographies

(Donald Robert Perry Marquis)(mär´kwĭs), 1878–1937, American author, b. Walnut, Ill. In 1912 he began the humorous column “The Sun Dial” in the New York Sun and later conducted “The Lantern” in the Herald Tribune. He invented various characters of gay satire, notably “archy the cockroach” and “mehitabel the cat.” Their saga is told in Lives and times of archy and mehitabel (3 vol. in 1, 1943). Marquis published innumerable stories, poems, and plays.