From 1967: Dorothy Parker, Literary Wit, Dies at Age 73
She enjoyed a lifelong reputation as a glittering, annihilating humorist. For her epitaph, she suggested, “Excuse My Dust.”
This obituary was originally published on June 8, 1967. It is being republished for a package for Women’s History Month.
Dorothy Parker, the sardonic humorist who purveyed her wit in conversation, short stories, verse and criticism, died of a heart attack yesterday afternoon in her suite at the Volney Hotel, 23 East 74th Street. She was 73 years old and had been in frail health in recent years.
In print and in person, Miss Parker sparkled with a word or a phrase, for she honed her humor to its most economical size. Her rapier wit, much of it spontaneous, gained its early renown from her membership to the Algonquin Round Table, an informal luncheon club at the Algonquin Hotel in the nineteen-twenties, where some of the city’s most sedulous framers of bon mots gathered.
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