List of humorists

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A humorist (American English) or humourist (British English) is an intellectual who uses humor in writing or public speaking. [1] Humorists are distinct from comedians, who are show business entertainers whose business is to make an audience laugh, though it is possible for some persons to occupy both roles in the course of their careers.

Despite the fact that the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts annually bestows a Mark Twain Prize for American Humor (usually on comedians) since 1998, this award does not by itself qualify the recipient as a humorist. As of 2017 only two recipients, Steve Martin and Neil Simon, are known as humorists, being humorous playwrights.

List

Notable humorists include:

Related Research Articles

Fantasy comedy or comic fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy that is primarily humorous in intent and tone. Typically set in imaginary worlds, fantasy comedy often involves puns on, and parodies of, other works of fantasy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Satire</span> Literary and art genre with a style of humor based on parody

Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposing or shaming the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terry Pratchett</span> English fantasy author (1948–2015)

Sir Terence David John Pratchett was an English author, humorist, and satirist, best known for his 41 comic fantasy novels set on the Discworld, and for the apocalyptic comedy novel Good Omens (1990) which he wrote with Neil Gaiman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Humorist</span> Intellectual who uses humor in writing or public speaking

A humorist is an intellectual who uses humor, or wit, in writing or public speaking, but is not an artist who seeks only to elicit laughter. Humorists are distinct from comedians, who are show business entertainers whose business is to make an audience laugh. It is possible to play both roles in the course of a career. A raconteur is one who tells anecdotes in a skillful and amusing way.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erma Bombeck</span> American humorist and writer

Erma Louise Bombeck was an American humorist who achieved great popularity for her newspaper humor column describing suburban home life, syndicated from 1965 to 1996. She also published 15 books, most of which became bestsellers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">S. J. Perelman</span> American screenwriter (1904–1979)

Sidney Joseph Perelman was an American humorist and screenwriter. He is best known for his humorous short pieces written over many years for The New Yorker. He also wrote for several other magazines, including Judge, as well as books, scripts, and screenplays. Perelman received an Academy Award for screenwriting in 1956.

George Mikes was a Hungarian-born British journalist, humorist and writer, best known for his humorous commentaries on various countries.

A comic novel is a novel-length work of humorous fiction. Many well-known authors have written comic novels, including P. G. Wodehouse, Henry Fielding, Mark Twain, and John Kennedy Toole. Comic novels are often defined by the author's literary choice to make the thrust of the work—in its narration or plot—funny or satirical in orientation, regardless of the putative seriousness of the topics addressed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan DeQuille</span> American journalist

William Wright (1829–1898), better known by the pen name Dan DeQuille or Dan De Quille, was an American author, journalist, and humorist. He was best known for his written accounts of the people, events, and silver mining operations on the Comstock Lode at Virginia City, Nevada, including his non-fiction book History of the Big Bonanza.

American humor refers collectively to the conventions and common threads that tie together humor in the United States. It is often defined in comparison to the humor of another country – for example, how it is different from British humor and Canadian humor. It is, however, difficult to say what makes a particular type or subject of humor particularly American. Humor usually concerns aspects of American culture, and depends on the historical and current development of the country's culture. The extent to which an individual will personally find something humorous obviously depends on a host of absolute and relative variables, including, but not limited to geographical location, culture, maturity, level of education, and context. People of different countries will therefore find different situations funny. Just as American culture has many aspects which differ from other nations, these cultural differences may be a barrier to how humor translates to other countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seba Smith</span>

Seba Smith was an American humorist and writer. He was married to Elizabeth Oakes Smith, also a writer, and he was the father of Appleton Oaksmith.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Argentine humour</span>

Argentine humour is exemplified by a number of humorous television programmes, film productions, comic strips and other types of media. Everyday humour includes jokes related to recurrent themes, such as xenophobic jokes at the expense of Galicians (Spaniards) called chistes de gallegos, often obscene sex-related jokes, jokes about the English, the Americans, blonde women, dark humour, word and pronunciation games, jokes about Argentines themselves, etc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bert Leston Taylor</span> American poet

Bert Leston Taylor was an American columnist, humorist, poet, and author.

<i>The Brown Jug</i> Brown University college humor magazine

The Brown Jug is a college humor magazine founded in 1920 at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laureano Márquez</span>

Laureano Márquez, is a Spanish-born Venezuelan humorist and politologist.

Stoddard King was an American author and songwriter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fran Milčinski</span>

Fran Milčinski, also known by the pen name Fridolin Žolna, was a Slovene lawyer, writer and playwright.

References

  1. Henry, Patrick (April 15, 2013). "Don't Call Me a Comedian" . Retrieved December 7, 2017.
  2. "Franklin Funnies". PBS.org . Twin Cities Public Television, Inc. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  3. Eschner, Kat (17 January 2017). "Benjamin Franklin Was a Middle-Aged Widow Named Silence Dogood (And a Few Other Women)". Smithsonian Mag . Smithsonian Institution . Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  4. Baumgartner, Jody C., ed. (2019). American Political Humor: Masters of Satire and Their Impact on U.S. Policy and Culture. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. xvi. ISBN   9781440854866.
  5. Bennett, Troy R. (December 26, 2018). "How Down East storytelling shaped Maine's humor". Bangor Daily News. Bangor, Maine: Bangor Publishing Company. Retrieved August 14, 2020.
  6. Sears, Donald A. (1978). John Neal. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers. pp. 93, 96. ISBN   080-5-7723-08.
  7. Baumgartner, Jody C., ed. (2019). American Political Humor: Masters of Satire and Their Impact on U.S. Policy and Culture. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. xvi. ISBN   9781440854866.
  8. "Obituary", Variety , February 1, 1956
  9. Whitman, Alden (August 29, 1971). "Bennett Cerf Dies; Publisher, Writer; Bennett Cerf, Publisher and Writer, Is Dead at 73". The New York Times . Retrieved 2013-12-12.
  10. Voorhees, Richard (1985). "P.G. Wodehouse". In Stayley, Thomas F. (ed.). Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Novelists, 1890–1929: Traditionalists. Detroit: Gale. pp.  341–342. ISBN   978-0-8103-1712-3. [I]t is now abundantly clear that Wodehouse is one of the funniest and most productive men who ever wrote in English. He is far from being a mere jokesmith: he is an authentic craftsman, a wit and humorist of the first water, the inventor of a prose style which is a kind of comic poetry.
  11. "Terry Pratchett". Guardian Unlimited. September 24, 2014. Retrieved September 24, 2014.
  12. "Interview de Terry Pratchett (en Anglais) (Interview with Terry Pratchett (in English))". Nathalie Ruas, ActuSF. June 2002. Retrieved June 19, 2007.