biography
| name: |
Thayer, Ernest Lawrence
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1863–1940)
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| biography:
| Poet and businessman, born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, USA. His father owned several woollen mills, including one in Worcester, MA where Ernest grew up. At Harvard he was regarded as a brilliant philosophy student of William James, and he also contributed to the annual Hasty Pudding plays and was an editor of the Harvard Lampoon. After graduating with honours (1885), he went to Paris where his classmate and friend, William Randolph Hearst, invited him to contribute a humour column to the San Francisco Examiner. He did so under the by-line Phin (1886–8), writing a series of humorous ballads that included Casey (appeared 3 Jun 1888, and for which he was paid $5). It went generally unnoticed until William De Wolf Hopper, a vaudeville comedian and comic opera singer of the day, began to recite it (starting late 1888 or early 1889), and it so caught on that he recited it over 10 000 times in the ensuing years. Thayer returned to Worcester (1887) and unenthusiastically managed one of the family's mills, and after c.20 years he retired and went to Santa Barbara, CA (1912), where he married a widow and spent the rest of his life. As Casey at the Bat (its widely known title) increased in popularity, many tried to claim authorship (and many ballplayers claimed to have been the original Casey), but Thayer is recognized as the true author. His only other published poems were several more humorous ballads for Hearst's New York Journal (1896–7). For many years he found it a nuisance to be associated with the ballad, but in his final years he came to accept that he had written a classic of its kind. It has inspired many musical works, films, paintings, sculptures and, above all, endless parodies and variations. |
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