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Don(ald) (Robert Perry) Marquis |
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Born of indeterminate parents but probably of Periplaneta americana or Periplaneta fuliginosa stock (American or Smoky Brown), Archy the cockroach discovered a patron and admirer in the offices of the New York Evening Sun. It was 1916 when Archy came to the attention of Don Marquis, columnist, short-story writer, playwright, poet, and epigrammatic philosopher. Archy claimed to have been transmigrated, that in one of his earlier lives he had been a free-verse bard. Beginning on 29 March 1916, Marquis "transmitted" Archy's messages, typed on Marquis's typewriter and addressed "dear boss," to the wider public via his column, "The Sun Dial." Because Archy could not press the shift key and a letter key at the same time, none of his messages contained capital letters. When Marquis first collected his Archy columns in Archy and Mehitabel (1927), Archys Life of Mehitabel (1933), and Archy Does His Part (1935), the books were printed with capital letters, but later editions of these still popular books were published without them to conform to Archy's typography.
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