SOURCE: Melzer, Sondra. “Introduction.” In The Rhetoric of Rage: Women in Dorothy Parker, pp. 1-11. New York: Peter Lang, 1997.

In the following essay, Melzer offers a feminist perspective on Parker's work.

It is astonishing that Dorothy Parker's universe remains essentially unexplored as serious literature about women. A gifted satirist, reputed as the wittiest woman in America, Parker lived with flamboyant flair in the 1920's and become legendary as a writer of verse and short fiction that depicted uniquely female experiences.

By all accounts, she was the leading light of the small literary set centered in New York during the Jazz Age. When she published her first collection of poems, Enough Rope, in 1926, the book was an instant best-seller—one of the few best-selling poetry books in American history. But people bought it because the author was a media celebrity, and they seemed to appreciate it more for the...