Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), American writer, whose poems and short stories are characterized by a bitingly humorous and sardonic style. Born in West End, New Jersey, Parker was educated at the Blessed Sacrament Convent, in New York City. From 1916 to 1920 she was a drama and literary critic for the magazines Vogue and Vanity Fair in New York City, after which she became a free-lance writer. Parker was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of writers and artists that gathered regularly during the 1920s and 1930s at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. The group included such American writers as George S. Kaufman, Robert E. Sherwood, Marc Connelly, Heywood Broun, and Robert Benchley and was known for witty conversation and verbal sparring.

Parker's writings are concerned mainly with love and with the frustrations and contradictions of modern life. Her books of verse include Death and Taxes (1931) and Not So Deep as a Well (1936); she also wrote the short story collections Laments for the Living (1930) and After Such Pleasures (1933). Constant Reader (posthumously published, 1970) comprises book reviews she wrote for the New Yorker magazine from 1927 to 1933 under the pseudonym Constant Reader.