Daily Archives: July 16, 2012

James Thurber – Style Icon

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NAME: James Grover Thurber
OCCUPATION: Illustrator, Author
BIRTH DATE: December 08, 1894
DEATH DATE: November 02, 1961
EDUCATION: Ohio State University
PLACE OF BIRTH: Columbus, Ohio
PLACE OF DEATH: New York City, New York

BEST KNOWN FOR: James Thurber was an American cartoonist best known for his contributions to The New Yorker magazine.

James Thurber (born Dec. 8, 1894, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.—died Nov. 2, 1961, New York, N.Y.) U.S. writer and cartoonist. He attended Ohio State University before moving to New York City in 1926. He was on The New Yorker staff from 1927 to 1933 and thereafter remained a leading contributor. His drawings illustrated his first book, Is Sex Necessary? (1929; with E.B. White), and his cartoons became some of the most popular and recognizable in America. In 1940 his failing eyesight forced him to curtail his drawing; by 1952 he had to give it up altogether as his blindness became nearly total. His writings include My Life and Hard Times (1933), Fables for Our Time (1940), and the children’s book The 13 Clocks (1950). He is noted for his vision of the befuddled urban man who, like the hero of his short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (1939; film, 1946), escapes into fantasy.

An annual award, the Thurber Prize, begun in 1997, honors outstanding examples of American humor. In 2008, The Library of America selected Thurber’s New Yorker story “A Sort of Genius” for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.

Two of his residences are on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places: the Thurber House in Ohio and the Sanford-Curtis-Thurber House in Fairfield County, Connecticut.

Thurber was a great lover of dogs, and competed widely in dog shows with several poodles.

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