In the 1920s and 1930s Dorothy Parker, the pampered, yet feared, darling of the New York smart set, was the most quotable, quoted, and misquoted person in America. She earned this reputation by creating humorous and satiric verse, writing trenchant and biting reviews for the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, and making clever and stinging comments often repeated in the conversations and columns of her Algonquin Hotel Round Table associates--Robert Benchley, Franklin Pierce Adams (F.P.A.), and Alexander Woollcott. Her verses and remarks, such as "Men seldom make passes/ At girls who wear glasses," "a girl's best friend is her mutter," and "Verlaine was always chasing Rimbauds," became sophisticated parlance. Parker's permanent place among American writers, however, depends on the critical reputation afforded her short stories.

Parker was born Dorothy Rothschild in West End, New Jersey, of a Jewish father and a Scottish mother, J. Henry and...