Artemus Ward (1834-1867) was an American journalist, humorist, and comic lecturer who achieved fame on both sides of the Atlantic.

Artemus Ward was the pen name of Charles Farrar Browne, who was born in Waterford, Maine. The son of a surveyor, storekeeper, and farmer, at 13 he was apprenticed to a printer. He set type for several newspapers in New England before a Boston printshop hired him in 1851. His first humorous sketches, signed "Chub," appeared in the Boston Carpet-bag. During the next 2 years he was a printer in several Ohio towns. In 1853 he became an editor on the Toledo Commercial; between 1857 and 1861 he was an editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

In 1858 Browne wrote a humorous letter purportedly from a traveling showman, Artemus Ward, for the Plain Dealer. Similar pieces appeared in this paper and then in Vanity Fair. He soon became a regular contributor to that comic magazine...