When we think about The New Yorker’s early years and its marquee personalities, John Mosher’s name doesn’t come up very often, if at all. And yet, he was the person who, in Katharine White’s words, “discovered” James Thurber. Mosher’s work at The New Yorker included reading unsolicited manuscripts (he was also the magazine’s first regularly assigned film critic). It was Mosher who pulled a Thurber piece* out of the slush pile and thought it good enough to forward along to Ms. White for consideration (this after Mosher rejected Thurber’s nineteen previous submissions).
In The Years With Ross Thurber wrote of first submitting, in 1926, to The New Yorker:
“My pieces came back so fast I began to believe the New Yorker had a rejection machine. It did have one too. His name was John Chapin Mosher…In the years that followed, we became friends, but I never had lunch with him that he didn’t say, over his coffee, ‘I must get back to the office and reject.'”
*”An American Romance” ran in the issue of March 5, 1927 (although it was the first Thurber piece purchased by The New Yorker, it didn’t run first).
Here, in part is Mr. Mosher’s New York Times obit, published September 4, 1942:
His New Yorker obit, published in the issue of September 12, 1942 was written by Wolcott Gibbs:
Left: a collection of John Mosher’s New Yorker work, illustrated by Mary Petty.
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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