Thurber Original Drawings At The Library Of Congress & Smith
Last Thursday, the Spill noted Vassar’s two Thurber original drawings. In the days since, comics scholar, editor of ComicsDC, and good friend of the Spill, Mike Rhode, alerted me to the Thurber originals in The Library of Congress. Like Vassar, The LoC has two Thurber originals. Unlike Vassar, I’m unable to show the pieces full size. So here’re the thumbnails as they appear on the LoC’s website:
Further north, in Massachusetts, I found that Smith College has one Thurber original in their holdings. Smith generously allows the site visitor to see the drawing up close:
and here is their listing for it:
[Update]
And here’s The Art Institute Of Chicago’s Thurber original:
and their listing of it:
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James Thurber’s entry on the A-Z:
James Thurber Born, Columbus, Ohio, December 8, 1894. Died 1961, New York City. New Yorker work: 1927 -1961, with several pieces run posthumously. According to the New Yorker’s legendary editor, William Shawn, “In the early days, a small company of writers, artists, and editors — E.B. White, James Thurber, Peter Arno, and Katharine White among them — did more to make the magazine what it is than can be measured.”
Key cartoon collection: The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments (Harper & Bros., 1932). Key anthology (writings & drawings): The Thurber Carnival (Harper & Row, 1945). There have been a number of Thurber biographies. Burton Bernstein’s Thurber (Dodd, Mead, 1975) and Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times (Henry Holt & Co., 1995) are essential. Website