Books About Dorothy Parker
	A Journey into Dorothy Parker's New York By Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, Foreword by Marion Meade Paperback, 150 pages, illustrated with maps & photos, Roaring Forties Press, 2005 This new book is part of the ARTPLACE SERIES of literary and art guide books; there are more than 150 illustrations and more than 100 places where Dorothy Parker lived, worked, drank, loved and lost. It is a book for those that want to see New York through her eyes, go back to the era from her birth in 1893 to her death in 1967. It is the only book that shows the reader Manhattan from her perspective, how it influenced her, and how she influenced it. The Library Journal calls it, "a stunning and highly entertaining book that combines biography, architecture, literature, and travel." With a foreword by Marion Meade, author of Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This?. More about the book here.
	Dorothy Parker, What Fresh Hell is This? By Marion Meade Paperback, 460 pages, illustrated, Penguin Books, 2007 Highest recommendation. The definitive biography of Dorothy Parker is this one by Marion Meade. Dorothy Parker, What Fresh Hell is This? was published in 1987 and was re-issued in 2007 with a new author's afterword that fills in what has happened to Parker's legacy in the last 20 years. Meade is a thorough and detailed biographer who has a writing style that is perfect for a biography. She paints a balanced portrait of the amazing Dorothy Parker, and shows why Parker is an important figure in literature. Lots of documentation and sources cited; ancedotes, yarns, and myths about Mrs. Parker. Big photo section. Meade is the only one to interview Parker's family. Of the three Parker biographies out there, this is the best one. Meade is like a private investigator who turns up new information and new facts about Mrs. Parker. You can't be a Parker fan and not own this book. Read an interview with Marion Meade here.
	Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties (Paperback) 368 pages. Harvest Books (2005) By Marion Meade Highly Recommended. Twenty years ago Meade wrote Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This? It remains the definitive Dorothy Parker biography; now she expands on the 10 most exciting years of Parker's life, along with Edna Ferber, Zelda Fitzgerald and Edna St. Vincent Millay. The subtitle of Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin is "Writers Running Wild in the Twenties" and it is an exciting read that zeroes in on one decade in the lives of the four women and those close to them. There are other, longer, and deeper biographies and autobiographies of the quartet, but this book digs beneath the surface about what made them so unique, powerful and passionate about what they did. [READ MORE CLICK HERE].
	Dorothy Parker: In Her Own Words By Barry Day Hardcover, 202 pages. Taylor Trade Publishing; 1st edition (July, 2004) This book uses samples of Mrs. Parker's poems, verse, short stories and letters to re-construct her life. What author Barry Day does is the same thing he did for Conan Doyle and P.G. Wodehouse, which is to build an "autobiography" around the life of Mrs. Parker by using her own material. An interesting way to present a person's life. [READ INTERVIEW, CLICK HERE].
	Dorothy Parker, A Bio-Bibliography Edited by Randall Calhoun Hardcover, 174 pages, Greenwood Press, 1993 I love this book, but only as a hardcore Parker fan. It is about 70 percent bibliography: books, short stories, screenplays, published interviews, miscellaneous work, pieces from magazines and newspapers. But the gem here is Wyatt Cooper's 1968 Esquire article "Whatever You Think Dorothy Parker Was Like, She Wasn't" which provides the only accounting of her later years. There are two other early Parker bios too, which are fascinating to read. Plus an excellent bio sketch by Calhoun. Recommended for only the serious Parker fan or scholar.
	The Late Mrs. Dorothy Parker By Leslie Frewin Hardcover, 345 pages, MacMillan Publishing Company, 1987 This biography came out at almost the same time as Marion Meade's What Fresh Hell Is This? and that is likely what you will say if you read The Late Mrs. Dorothy Parker after you have read Meade's superior book. Frewin doesn't have a soft touch, but he does have several different anecdotes and a different approach to examining Mrs. Parker's life. This is a second-tier book, but a good addition for completists.
	Dorothy Parker, Revised (Twayne's United States Authors Series) By Arthur F. Kinney Hardcover, 201 pages, Twayne Publishing, 1998 If you are seeking literary criticism of Dorothy Parker, this is the book for you. A volume in the respected "Twayne's U.S. Authors Series", it offers a critical introduction to the life and work of Dorothy Parker. Accompanied by new works and new manuscript evidence, the richly interdependent and often calamitous relationship between Parker's life and art is reviewed in this full, comprehensive study. Each of her major pieces, and many of her better-known minor ones, is placed within the life and times in which she wrote to help the reader understand her numerous references and allusions to contemporary events.
	A Gendered Collision: Sentimentalism and Modernism in Dorothy Parker's Poetry and Fiction By Rhonda S. Pettit Hardcover, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000 Dorothy Parker was perceived as a marginal modernist at best, and a sentimentalist at worst. In exploring the Parker paradox, this study draws on feminist assessments of 20th Century modernism to recontextualize the scene of Parker's literary production. Parker's poetry has been ignored by historians of modernism because of its content, form, and publishing venue. If we consider, however, that modernism embodies more than just technical experimentation, we can appreciate the collision of values found in Parker's poetry for what they are.
	The Rhetoric of Rage: Women in Dorothy Parker By Sondra Melzer Paperback, 196 Pages, Peter Lang Publishing, 2001 This book explores the treatment of women from a contemporary feminist perspective and reveals the ways in which Parker's brittle humor reflects muted anger toward a patriarchal society. Through close examination of the texts, the work investigates the hidden discontents, the buried conflicts of women's lives and exposes the forces at work both implicitly and explicitly that shape their existence. The book locates links between the author's life and the fiction and elucidates the ways in which Parker lived her life in fiction and her fiction in life.