John Kendrick Bangs
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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John Kendrick Bangs (May 27, 1862 – January 21, 1922) was an American author, editor and satirist.
Biography
He was born in Yonkers, New York. His father was a lawyer in New York City, as was his brother, Francis S. Bangs.
He went to Columbia University from 1880 to 1883 where he became editor of Columbia's literary magazine and contributed short anonymous pieces to humor magazines. After graduation in 1883, Bangs entered Columbia Law School but left in 1884 to become Associate Editor of Life under Edward S. Martin. Bangs contributed many articles and poems to the magazine between 1884 and 1888. During this period, Bangs published his first books.
In 1888 Bangs left Life to work at Harper's Magazine, Harper's Bazaar and Harper's Young People. From 1889 to 1900 he held the title of Editor of the Departments of Humor for all three Harper's magazines and from 1899 to 1901 served as active editor of Harper's Weekly. Bangs also served for a short time (January–June, 1889) as the first editor of Munsey's Magazine and became editor of the American edition of the Harper-owned Literature from January to November, 1899.
He left Harper & Brothers in 1901 and became editor of the New Metropolitan magazine in 1903. In 1904 he was appointed editor of Puck, perhaps the foremost American humor magazine of its day. In this period, he revived his earlier interest in drama. In 1906 he switched his focus to the lecture circuit.
Agnes Hyde Bangs, his wife with whom he had three sons, died in 1903. Bangs then married Mary Gray. In 1907 they moved from Yonkers to Ogunquit, Maine. John Kendrick Bangs died from stomach cancer in 1922 at age fifty-nine, in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Partial bibliography
- Roger Camerden, A Strange Story (1887)
- Tappleton's Client: or A Spirit in Exile (1893)
- The Water Ghost, and others (1894)
- Thurlow's Christmas Story (1894) </br>In 2009, The Library of America selected this story for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American Fantastic Tales, edited by Peter Straub.
- Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica (1895)
- The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces (1896)
- Ghosts I Have Met and Some Others (1898)
- The Dreamers: A Club (1899)
- Over the Plum Pudding (1901)
- Bikey the Skicycle and Other Tales of Jimmieboy (1902)
- Rollo in Emblemland (1902)
- Mollie and the Unwiseman (1902)
- Olympian Nights (1902)
- The Inventions of the Idiot (1904)
- Worsted Man: A Musical Play for Amateurs (1905)
- R. Holmes & Co.: Being the Remarkable Adventures of Raffles Holmes, Esq., Detective and Amateur Cracksman by Birth (1906)
- Alice in Blunderland, An Iridescent Dream (1907)
- The Whole Family: a Novel by Twelve Authors (1908) - one chapter
- Coffee and Repartee
- Three Weeks in Politics
- Associated Shades novels:
