Dorothy Rothschild Parker was born in 1893 in West End, New Jersey, to Eliza Marston Roths- child, a Scottish Protestant who died shortly after Dorothy's birth, and J. Henry Rothschild, a wealthy Jewish garment manufacturer. Parker felt shame concerning her mixed ethnic and religious background and later stated that she would write an autobiography if only to entitle it Mongrel. Parker was sent to the exclusive Miss Dana's school in Morristown, New Jersey, after being expelled from the Blessed Sacrament Convent in New York, where she had received a classical education. In June 1917, she married Edwin Pond Parker II, a high-society, heavy-drinking stockbroker. During the 1920s, when Edwin was overseas on two years of military service, Parker became well known in New York literary and theatrical societies as a member of the Algonquin Round Table, which included writers Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Franklin Pierce Adams, and George...