biography
| name: |
Browne, Charles Farrar
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originally Brown, pseudonym Artemus Ward
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1834–67)
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| biography:
| Writer and humorist, born in Waterford, Maine, USA. In a series of Cleveland Plain Dealer letters (1857–9) purportedly written by Artemus Ward, he created the blustery character through whom he satirized contemporary society. These letters, followed by an endless series he concocted to describe everything he saw or thought, were part of the ongoing American tradition of ‘unlettered’ colloquial writing that culminated in Mark Twain's work. He joined the staff on Vanity Fair (1859), and after 1861 toured the USA and England impersonating Ward (and incidentally inventing the comic lecture). He died of tuberculosis while on a lecture tour in England. |
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