Ellis Parker Butler

Ellis Parker Butler (1869 - 1905)

Ellis Parker Butler (December 5, 1869 – September 13, 1937) was an American author. He was the author of more than 30 books and more than 2,000 stories and essays and is most famous for his short story “Pigs Is Pigs“, in which a bureaucratic stationmaster insists on levying the livestock rate for a shipment of two pet guinea pigs, which soon start proliferating exponentially. His most famous character was Philo Gubb.

His career spanned more than forty years, and his stories, poems, and articles were published in more than 225 magazines. His work appeared alongside that of his contemporaries, including Mark TwainSax RohmerJames B. HendryxBerton BraleyF. Scott FitzgeraldDon MarquisWill Rogers, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Despite the enormous volume of his work, Butler was, for most of his life, only a part-time author. He worked full-time as a banker and was very active in his local community. A founding member of both the Dutch Treat Club and the Authors League of America, Butler was an always-present force in the New York City literary scene.

Butler was born in Muscatine, Iowa on December 5, 1869. He moved to New York City and lived in Flushing (Queens) New York.

He wrote twenty-five stories for Woman’s Home Companion between 1906 and 1935. The stories in the Companion were illustrated by artists including May Wilson PrestonFrederic Dorr SteeleHerbert Paus and Rico Le Brun.

Between 1931 and 1936, at least seventeen of Butler’s stories published in newspapers were illustrated by Ethel Hays.

He died in Williamsville, Massachusetts on September 13, 1937, and was interred in Flushing Cemetery.

Poems By Ellis Parker Butler

Miscellaneous

A Question (No Comments »)
A St. Valentine’s Day Tragedy (No Comments »)
A Study In Feeling (No Comments »)
An Old-Fashioned Garden (No Comments »)
Cupid Caught Napping (No Comments »)
Golden Silence (No Comments »)
Good – Better – Best (3 Comments »)
Immortality (No Comments »)
Jabed Meeker, Humorist (No Comments »)
October (No Comments »)
The Golf Walk (No Comments »)
The Hunter (No Comments »)
The Poor Boy’s Christmas (No Comments »)
The Rich Boy’s Christmas (1 Comment »)
The Twenty Hoss-Power Shay (No Comments »)
The Wood Nymph (No Comments »)
To Kate. (In Lieu Of A Valentine) (No Comments »)
To May (No Comments »)
To Phyllis And May (No Comments »)
Valentine To The Girl In Black (No Comments »)
Why I Went To The Foot (No Comments »)
Womanly Qualms (No Comments »)

American Magazine

. Bird Nesting (1 Comment »)
. The Ballade Of The Mistletoe Bough (No Comments »)
. The Water Nymphs (No Comments »)

Bedford Gazette

. A Scotchman Whose Name Was Isbister (No Comments »)

Bookman

. Djolan (No Comments »)
. Little Ballads Of Timely Warning; II: On Malicious Cruelty To Harmless Creatures (No Comments »)
. Little Ballads Of Timely Warning; III: On Laziness And Its Resultant Ills (No Comments »)
. Mouths Of Hippopotami And Some Recent Novels (No Comments »)
. New England Magazine (1 Comment »)
. Reasonable Interest (No Comments »)

Bridgeport Telegram

. Mary Had A Little Frog (2 Comments »)

Century Magazine

. Partners (No Comments »)
. The Ballad Of A Bachelor (2 Comments »)
. The Cut Finger (No Comments »)
. The Tearful Tale Of Captain Dan (No Comments »)
. To Jessica, Gone Back To The City (No Comments »)
. Why Washington Retreated (No Comments »)

Frank Leslie's Monthly

. The Ballade Of The Automobile (No Comments »)

Iowa City Citizen

. The Charge of the Second Iowa Cavalry (No Comments »)

Judge

. A Pastoral (No Comments »)
. How’d You Like It? (No Comments »)
. Speaking Of Operations (No Comments »)

Life

. Would You Believe It? (No Comments »)

Middletown Daily Argus

. At Variance (No Comments »)

National Magazine

. A Lost Angel (No Comments »)

New England Magazine

. A Minute (No Comments »)
. Anticipation (No Comments »)
. Circumstantial Evidence (No Comments »)
. Night In The City (No Comments »)
. Outbid (No Comments »)
. The Daughter Of The Year (No Comments »)
. To Lovers (No Comments »)
. To Marguerite (No Comments »)
. Trespassers (No Comments »)

New York Times

. Says Mister Doojabs (No Comments »)

New Yorker

. Song For Heroes (1 Comment »)

On the Tibur Road

. To G. M. W. And G. F. W. (No Comments »)

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern

. When Ida Puts Her Armor On (No Comments »)

Puck

. Ridden Down (No Comments »)

Red Book

. The Final Tax (No Comments »)

Saturday Evening Post

. Millennium (No Comments »)
. The Sheep (1 Comment »)
. The Whale (1 Comment »)
. Western (No Comments »)

Snappy Stories

. No Beer, No Work (No Comments »)

St. Nicholas Magazine

. Merry Christmas And Happy New Year! (No Comments »)

Sunset Magazine

. The Romance Of Patrolman Casey (No Comments »)

The Tuscarora Club's Forty Year History

. Judgment Day (No Comments »)

Truth

. A Culinary Puzzle (No Comments »)
. A Satisfactory Reform (No Comments »)