Does the name Scudder Middleton mean anything to you? It meant a little something to me, but no so much…until recently when I decided to look a little deeper into his association with The New Yorker’s art department. I’d seen his name on memos while sifting through the magazine’s archives in The New York Public
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New Yorker Cartoons & war
Pictured above: a handful of World War II era publications from The New Yorker. Beginning at twelve o’clock high, with the red cover is The New Yorker Cartoons with The Talk of The Town (1945) — it’s the hard cover version of the New Yorker booklet to the left (cover by Alajalov). This is an exciting publication, chock full of great
Read moreIn Good Company: a look at the cartoons in Al Ross’s New Yorker debut issue
The news that Al Ross passed away last week got me to thinking about his start at The New Yorker, way way back in the issue of November 27, 1937, when he was twenty-five years old. This morning I went to our cabinet full of bound New Yorkers, brought out the volume from late 1937 and began paging through
Read moreBook of Interest: Conversations with William Maxwell
Barbara Burkhardt, who wrote William Maxwell: A Literary Life (University of Mississippi Press, 2005) has edited Conversations with William Maxwell (University of Mississippi Press, June, 2012. Maxwell, who joined The New Yorker in 1936, was originally hired as a hand holder for the Artists, taking over from Wolcott Gibbs, who had tired of the task. The job required Maxwell
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