B. P. Shillaber
Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber, born in 1814 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was a prominent American humorist and writer known for his comic character, Mrs. Partington. After being educated in public schools and apprenticed as a printer, Shillaber began his career in the literary world at the Boston Post. His breakthrough came when he submitted a monologue featuring Mrs. Partington, which humorously depicted rural life and became popular with readers. He expanded his influence by founding and editing the humor magazine Carpet-Bag, which published works by notable humorists, including Mark Twain. Throughout his career, Shillaber published several collections of Mrs. Partington sketches and other writings, achieving substantial sales and popularity. In addition to his written work, he also engaged in public speaking, performing lectures akin to modern stand-up comedy. Shillaber's contributions to American humor and his characterization of rural and urban life remain significant in the literary landscape of the 19th century.
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Subject Terms
B. P. Shillaber
Writer
- Born: July 12, 1814
- Birthplace: Portsmouth, New Hampshire
- Died: November 25, 1890
Biography
Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1814, Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber was educated in public schools until he was fifteen, when he was apprenticed to a printer. By 1833 he had begun working for the Boston bookmaking firm of Tuttle and Weeks, and two years later he was qualified as a journeyman printer. However, when he was twenty-one, an illness caused him to spend a couple of years in the tropics, and he worked as a print compositor for the Royal Gazette in British Guiana (now Guyana). He returned home in July, 1838, and joined the Boston Post as a printer. He later married Ann Tappan de Rochemont, with whom he had eight children.
After laboring diligently as a printer for nine years, Shillaber slipped his sketch of a monologue by a rural New Englander, Mrs. Partington, under the editor’s door. The monologue, written in vernacular and following the common method of lampooning rural folk and their lack of worldly knowledge, was published in the Boston Post, and the newspaper later printed additional sketches about Mrs. Partington. These pieces were well received by readers, and before long Shillaber became a nationally-known comic writer.
As he became acquainted with other writers, Shillaber decided to strike out on his own. He d founded the humor magazine and literary journal Carpet-Bag, which he edited from 1851 until 1853. Although the journal was short-lived, it was very influential and published work by humorists, including two authors who later became famous, Mark Twain and Artemus Ward. Shillaber also published his Mrs. Partington sketches in Carpet-Bag. Although Mrs. Partington sometimes was defined by a foil, such as her adolescent nephew, Ike, and other characters, she was the primary focus of most of the sketches. Shillaber eventually created another comic character, Mr. Blifkin, who, unlike Mrs. Partington, was a worldly man of the city, visiting the rubes in the country.
Shillaber returned to the Boston Post after Carpet- Bag folded. In 1854, he published a collection of Mrs. Partington sketches, Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington and Others of the Family, which sold more than thirty thousand copies. He would continue working at the Boston Post until 1856, when he left to become a reporter for the Saturday Evening Gazette. He published additional collections of Mrs. Partington sketches, including Knitting Work: A Web of Many Textures Wrought by Ruth Partington (1859) and Partingtonian Patchwork (1873), and a poetry collection, Lines in Pleasant Places: Rhythmics of Many Moods and Quantities (1874). Like other humorists of the day, Shillaber traveled and delivered lectures that were the nineteenth century equivalent of modern stand-up comedy routines.