Welcome to www.EllisParkerButler.Info SIGN-IN
HOME BIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY READING ROOM
Welcome to www.EllisParkerButler.Info, the best place on the Internet to find information about the life and work of Ellis Parker Butler, American humorist and author.

"Ellis Parker Butler" from My Maiden Effort

by Ellis Parker Butler
text only format text only  printer friendly format printer friendly

    'Ellis Parker Butler' from My Maiden Effort (1921)

    1921

  • BOOK: My Maiden Effort (1921) "Ellis Parker Butler"   An essay. This book is subtitled "The Personal Confessions of Well Known American Authors. Collected by the Authors' League of America" There's a one-page essay where Butler recalls his first published works saying "I've been a hard-working hack. I've earned what I got." Edited by Gelett Burgess. Garden City N. Y. and Toronto: Doubleday, Page and Company. Page 34.  [EPBLIB]

from My Maiden Effort
Ellis Parker Butler
by Ellis Parker Butler

I believe the first piece I ever had published was a set of verses on some local topic, printed in the Muscatine Journal.

I sent them anonymously and I think the name I signed was "Ayah," which was what my kid sister used to call me, not being able to say "Ellis." I was then only a small boy.

I remember more clearly my second effort, which was an imitation of "The splendor falls on castle walls," and described a local cyclone. There were four or five verses of this. This was sent to the same paper anonymously; and one reason I recall it so vividly is because I discovered, after I had mailed it, that I had used an envelope in which I kept all my supply of unused postage stamps. To lose the stamps was a calamity, and the Journal did not use the poem.

The first piece for which I was paid was, I remember, written when I was a small boy still. It was called "Shorty and Frank's Adventure," and I sent it to one of the numerous cheap juveniles then extent, and received fifty cents for it, all in one cent postcards! After that I wrote and wrote. The Waverly, which sent a dozen copies of itself in payment, and revised my stories with a free hand, used a lot of my stuff. Life, Truth, Puck, The New England Magazine, and The Midland Monthly, of Des Moines, began sending small checks for short verse, and The National Magazine paid a few dollars for short prose, but the first real check I received was from The Century Magazine. I think this was for eighty dollars, and for a short humorous piece called "My Cyclone-Proof House."

In those days I used to have a memorandum book with thirty-one lines to the page and until a manuscript had been to thirty-one publications I did not think it was hopeless. Now I use a card system and don't never think no manuscript is never hopeless, not never at all.

I have never been an "intellegencia" or an "intellectual" or a "genius." I've been a hard-working hack. I've earned what I got.


My Maiden Effort

BACK



HOME  |  BIOGRAPHY  |  BIBLIOGRAPHY  |  COVER ART  |  PERIODICALS  |  READING ROOM
ABOUT THIS SITE  |  FOOTNOTES  |  RESOURCES  |  PIGS IS PIGS  |  CONTACT US

Saturday, October 07 at 1:54:29am USA Central
This web site is Copyright © 2006 by the ANDMORE Companies. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Images for viewing only. All copyrights remain with the holder. No covers or publications for sale.
www.EllisParkerButler.Info is a research project of the ANDMORE Companies, Houston TX USA.