The Best of Archy and Mehitabel

Description

A selection of the hilarious free verse poems by the irreverent insect poet Archy, who originally featured in Don Marquis's New York newspaper column between 1916 and the 1930s, and has been delighting generations of readers ever since. A poet in a former life, Archy has been reincarnated as a cockroach who types by diving headfirst onto a typewriter (and is famously unable to operate the shift key to produce capital letters); his side-kick Mehitabel is an alley cat who claims to have once been Cleopatra. Archy's poems irresistibly evoke Jazz Age New York - as seen from the alley; funny, wise, tender and tough, they represent the very best of American humour. Including George Herriman's whimsical illustrations and a classic introduction by novelist E.B. White, this Pocket Poet selection will make a beautiful volume, perfectly sized for its tiny hero.

Don Marquis (1878-1937) worked as a journalist in New York from 1909. In 1912 he launched his legendary column 'The Sun Dial' in the New York Evening Sun and four years later the Archy and Mehitabel poems began to appear, eventually collected into three volumes.