By Dorothy Parker.
Introduction and edited by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick
Donald Books/iUniverse (2014)
Hardcover, Softcover, E-Book, 500 pages
[Buy via Amazon]
The groundbreaking Broadway reviews of the inestimable Dorothy Parker are collected in one volume. For the first time in nearly 100 years readers can enjoy Mrs. Parker’s sharp wit and biting commentary on the Jazz Age hits and flops. Starting when she was 24 at Vanity Fair as New York’s only female theatre critic, Mrs. Parker reviewed some of the biggest names of the era: The Barrymores, George M. Cohan, W.C. Fields, Helen Hayes, Al Jolson, Eugene O’Neill, Will Rogers, and the Ziegfeld Follies. Her words of praise—and contempt—for the dramas, comedies, musicals, and revues are just as fresh and funny today as they were in the age of speakeasies and bathtub gin.
[Read a sample chapter]
[More about the book]
By Dorothy Parker. Introduction by Marion Meade. Cover by Seth.
Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition
Penguin Books (2006)
Paperback, 628 pages
[Buy via Amazon]
This is the bible for Dorothy Parker lovers. “The Portable” contains Mrs. Parker’s short stories, poems, book reviews and Broadway criticism. The book originally came out in 1944 — and has never gone out of print. All of Mrs. Parker’s most famous writing is presented here. Her short stories and verse were chosen in 1944 and arranged by Parker herself. This new edition adds her letters, magazine pieces, criticism and book reviews. The book was edited by Marion Meade, author of “Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This?” For most Parker fans, this is the first collection they buy, and it is a good start. If you are going to own just one Parker book, this is it.
Marion Meade Q&A [Click Here]
Cover artist Seth Q&A [Click Here]
Book Review [Click Here]
By Dorothy Parker. Introduction by Regina Barreca
Penguin Books (2002)
Paperback, 480 pages
[Buy via Amazon]
Highest recommendation. There are many stories included here that are not in The Portable Dorothy Parker, so this is a must-buy book. (And it has an Al Hirschfeld cover). Perfect to take on the subway, keep by your bedside, or give as a gift to the new Parker fan. All the greatest hits of classic Parker short stories and sketches. Collects everything from “Such a Pretty Little Picture” (1922) to her final story, “The Bolt Behind the Blue” (1958). It lists the publication date and name of the publication where the stories first appeared. There is also a well-written and concise introduction by Regina Barreca, a University of Connecticut professor. A chronology and bio are included. These short stories are what sets Parker up as one of the best American writers of the 20th Century. Get this book.
More about the book here.
By Dorothy Parker. Introduction by Marion Meade
Penguin Classics (2010)
Paperback, 432 pages
[Buy via Amazon]
Highest recommendation. Here is a handy book that collects her three volumes of verse in one cover, plus the uncollected verses. If you have The Portable Dorothy Parker you are missing many of the poems that Parker herself left out. This book collects them all. This volume has more than 300 pages of Parker verse, from her early days up to World War II. Add this book to your Parker collection.
Read the review here.
The Poetry & Short Stories of Dorothy Parker
By Dorothy Parker
Random House (1994)
Hardcover, 457 pages
[Buy via Amazon]
This is the Modern Library edition of the classic Dorothy Parker collection of stories and poems. If you want to introduce someone to Mrs. Parker — maybe with a birthday gift book — get this. The first half is divided into verse from the collected editions Enough Rope, Sunset Gun, Death and Taxes; the second half is more than 25 short stories. It’s a compact little hardcover book, with an old style typeface, and moderately priced. Even the dust jacket is classy.
By Dorothy Parker. Edited by Stuart Y. Silverstein
Scribner (2009)
Paperback, 256 pages
[Buy via Amazon]
Highly recommended. If you have The Portable Dorothy Parker, you also need to own Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker. This comprises all the work Parker left out of her earlier collected editions. Most people have not been exposed to this material for more than 60 years. Most was published from World War I to the 1920s in the old Life humor magazine, The New Yorker, New York Herald Tribune, and The Saturday Evening Post. An excellent and well-written 60-page bio by Silverstein, with lavish footnotes and trivia spread out. There are some real gems in here that bear reading. You need this book in your collection to appreciate some of Parker’s early, breezy verse.
Q&A Interview with editor Stuart Silverstein, 1999 [click here]
Q&A Interview with editor Stuart Silverstein, 2010 [click here]
By Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, Foreword by Marion Meade
Roaring Forties Press (2013)
Illustrated with maps & photos
Softcover, E-Book, 150 pages
[Buy via Amazon]
Take a journey into the city of theaters, bars, and hotel rooms where Dorothy Parker sharpened her wit, polished her writing, and captured the edgy mood of her times. This eye-opening volume explores Mrs. Parker’s favorite salons and saloons as well as her homes and offices (most of them still intact); charts her colorful career and intense private life; and recounts her political activism, theatrical exploits, and final years. The new edition of A Journey into Dorothy Parker’s New York is packed with more than 150 illustrations, many rare and never published before, and updated information on all the sites. Readers can use the maps to trace the footsteps of the most celebrated member of the Algonquin Round Table across Manhattan. This book will appeal to both longtime Parker devotees and those just discovering her charms, as well as to fans of New York City. “I supposed that is the thing about New York,” Mrs. Parker wrote in 1928. “It is always a little more than you had hoped for. Each day, there, is so definitely a new day.” With a foreword by Marion Meade, author of Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This?
[More about the book here]
[Read a sample chapter]
[Reviews]
By Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, Foreword by Allen Katz
Lyons Press (2014)
Illustrated with cartoons & photos
Hardcover, E-Book, 140 pages
[Buy via Amazon]
There has never been a book that collected cocktail recipes that tie the 1920s together with the celebrities of the era that made the drinks so famous. This is that guidebook. Under the Table: A Dorothy Parker Cocktail Guide was written by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, author of A Journey into Dorothy Parker’s New York and president of the Dorothy Parker Society. The handsome book has delicious recipes from A-Z: The Aviation to The Ziegfeld. A bar book for Jazz Age enthusiasts and literary tipplers alike, Under the Table offers a unique take on Mrs. Parker, the Algonquin Round Table, and the Jazz Age by profiling and celebrating the drinks that she, her bitter friends, and sweetest enemies enjoyed and discussed. Each entry of this delicious compendium offers a fascinating and lively background of a period cocktail, its ingredients, and the characters associated with it. The book is filled with vintage photos and illustrations, designed like a time capsule from the 1920s.
[More about the book here]
[Read a sample chapter]
By Marion Meade
Penguin Books (2007)
Illustrated with archival photos
Paperback, 460 pages
[Buy via Amazon]
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; anecdotes, 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.
By Marion Meade
Nan A. Talese (2004)
Hardcover, Paperback, E-Book, 368 pages
[Buy via Amazon]
Highly Recommended. Thirty 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.
[More about the book here]
Dorothy Parker, A Bio-Bibliography
Randall Calhoun, Editor & Compiler
Greenwood Press (1993)
Hardcover, 174 pages
[Buy via Amazon]
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.
By John Keats
Simon and Schuster (1970)
Hardcover & Paperback, 320 pages
[Buy via Amazon]
Biographer John Keats had the bad luck to try to write the first book about Dorothy Parker after Lillian Hellman wrote letters to every Parker acquaintance and told them not to cooperate with him. Keats wrote this first biography anyway, and his approach to Parker’s life does tend to trivialize some of her accomplishments. Without access to many friends still alive to talk about Parker, he relies on those who went up against Hellman, who was Parker’s estate executor. It is worth reading as there are stories not included in other books. Keats had previously written a bio of Howard Hughes and was a magazine writer; his writing style is breezy and accessible. Good photo section too.
The Late Mrs. Dorothy Parker
By Leslie Frewin
MacMillan Publishing Company (1987)
Hardcover, 345 pages
[Buy via Amazon]
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
Twayne Publishing (1998)
Hardcover, 201 pages
[Buy via Amazon]
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
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (2000)
Hardcover
[Buy via Amazon]
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
Peter Lang Publishing (2001)
Paperback, 196 Pages
[Buy via Amazon]
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.