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Archy And Mehitabel

Archy and Mehitabel were created by a newspaper columnist named Dan Marquis in the early 1900s. These are wonderful stories, written by "Archy" who is a cockroach, and featuring "Mehitabel," a cat who claims to have been Cleopatra in another life.

Here is one of the websites featuring some of the stories and poetry:
https://www.donmarquis.com/archy/

Here's a snippet:
"This Web page celebrates the genius of Don Marquis, creator of Archy and Mehitabel. Marquis was a writer for The Evening Sun in New York when, in 1916, he introduced Archy the cockroach in his daily column, The Sun Dial. For six years Archy's prodigious output found a home in The Evening Sun (later renamed The Sun), and for four years after that in the New York Tribune. When Marquis left newspapering in 1926 he took Archy with him, to Collier's magazine and a handful of others. In all, he wrote nearly 500 sketches featuring Archy, Mehitabel, Pete the pup, Freddy the rat, and assorted fleas, spiders, ghosts and martians. The vast majority of the sketches were written under daily deadline pressure, but the simplicity of their style and the humanness of cockroach and cat give them timeless appeal."

Mehitabel Archy

I love Archy and Mehitabel. I performed some of those poems for Forensics competitions my senior year. Some of Don Marquis' ideas are a little wacky for my taste, but the viewpoint and the language are just so unique and well-done that Archy and Mehitabel has become one of my favorite poetry books.

Archy And Mehitabel UFO & Writing Art Education Sciences

They are wonderful. I was introduced to them in an intense English course, where we had to punctuate, capitalize, etc., the story selections. It was really great, and I enjoy the stories so much, still! It's good to know there are still books in print, and the websites that carry archives.