Dorothy Parker, c. 1910s–1920s. Wikimedia Commons · public domain.
Poet · Pairing I
Dorothy Parker
1893–1967 · American poet, critic, and wit
“You might as well live.”
Dorothy Parker was the sharpest wit of 1920s New York — a poet, short-story writer, and critic famous for one-liners that could cut glass. She was a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, the legendary lunch circle of writers and humorists whose banter defined the era’s literary scene, and she wrote celebrated theatre and book reviews.
Her verse — collected in best-sellers like Enough Rope (1926) and Sunset Gun (1928) — looks light and playful but hides a bruised, clear-eyed intelligence, especially about love, disappointment, and the lives of women. “Penelope” is a perfect miniature of her method: a few plain, deadpan lines that quietly overturn a whole heroic tradition.
Parker also wrote short stories (the much-anthologized “Big Blonde”) and Hollywood screenplays, and was an outspoken political activist — later blacklisted for her beliefs. Behind the famous quips was a writer of real feeling and conscience.
In this curriculum
Read her in Pairing I — Mythology Remixed →