Product Description

It’s no secret that most New Yorker readers flip through the magazine to look at the cartoons before they ever lay eyes on a word of the text. But what isn’t generally known is that over the decades a growing cadre of women artists have contributed to the witty, memorable cartoons that readers look forward to each week. Now Liza Donnelly, herself a renowned cartoonist with the New Yorker for more than twenty years, has written this wonderful, in-depth celebration of women cartoonists who have graced the pages of the famous magazine from the Roaring Twenties to the present day. An anthology of funny, poignant, and entertaining cartoons, biographical sketches, and social history all in one, Funny Ladies offers a unique slant on 20th-century and early 21st-century America through the humorous perspectives of the talented women who have captured in pictures and captions many of the key social issues of their time. As someone who understands firsthand the cartoonist’s art, Donnelly is in a position to offer distinctive insights on the creative process, the relationships between artists and editors, what it means to be a female cartoonist, and the personalities of the other New Yorker women cartoonists, whom she has known over the years.

Funny Ladies reveals never-before-published material from The New Yorker archives, including correspondence from Harold Ross, Katharine White, and many others. In addition, Donnelly has interviewed all of the living female cartoonists, many of their male counterparts, and editors and writers: Roger Angel, Lee Lorenz, Lillian Ross, Harriet Walden (legendary editor William Shawn’s secretary), Bob Mankoff, William Hamilton, Eldon Dedini, Dana Fradon, Frank Model, Bob Web, Sam Gross, Gahan Wilson, Joe Farris, among others.

Combining a wealth of information with an engaging and charming narrative, plus more than seventy cartoons, along with photographs and self-portraits of the cartoonists, Funny Ladies beautifully portrays the art and contributions of the brilliant female cartoonists in America’s greatest magazine.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #564584 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 217 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Business, golf and kids have all got their own cartoon spotlights via The New Yorker, so why not women? Instead of a cartoon collection, however, this is an exhaustive survey of the history of the few women cartoonists at the august magazine. Donnelly, a cartoonist herself, got access to the New Yorker's vast library of correspondence, so the book is full of in-depth accounts of spats between cartoonists such as Helen Hokinson and Barbara Shermund and legendary editors Harold Ross and Wallace Shawn. The result is a bonanza for those looking for raw material to analyze society's changing attitudes toward women and humor as reflected in the most highbrow of magazines. Where it comes up short, ironically, is the cartoons themselves, which are scattered throughout the book without identifying captions. Donnelly does offer insights into the careers of the early pioneers as they try to find material that suits them. A 20-year gap (1951–1972)during which almost no new women were introduced to the magazine speaks for itself, but woman are better represented today with such stars as Roz Chast and Marisa Acocella Marchetto. As history, Funny Ladies is essential, but it can't match the eloquence of the cartoons. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Cartoons constitute one of the New Yorker's greatest selling points, with Charles Addams' paranormal world sometimes followed on the next page by Jules Feiffer's social commentary. Donnelly, a cartoonist for the magazine for more than 20 years, chronicles the female cartoon contributors from the Jazz Baby and Bathtub Gin days satirized by such cartoonists as Helen Hokinson and Helen Harvey to the present. She provides social context, biographies, and, above all, analysis and interpretation of these women's work and relationships with their editors. Previously unpublished material from the magazine's archives complements an entertaining text already replete with representative examples from its pages, such as Mary Petty's drawing of ultrasophisticates drinking as one woman gossips, "She's not going to divorce him quite yet. She thinks he has another book in him"; and Donnelly's own wry commentary on chic New York rooftop parties, "O.K., everybody. Let's eat before the food gets dirty." This coffee-table book including extra photos, bibliography, endnotes and a foreword by Feiffer should attract social historians, both pros and hobbyists, like flies. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"...examination of the contributions of women artists to The New Yorker cartoon tradition by one of its talented practitioners." -- Robert Mankoff, Cartoon Editor, The New Yorker Magazine

"...extra photos, bibliography, endnotes and a foreword by Feiffer should attract social historians, both pros and hobbyists, like flies." -- Booklist, Oct. 1, 2005

"Donnelly’s book matches her subject perfectly. Her writing is, like the magazine itself, understated, precise, and always lucid." -- Dutchess Magazine, September/October 2005

"Every page of Funny Ladies brims with engaging images and stories as Liza Donnelly brings her unique perspective..." -- Judith Yaross Lee, Professor of Communication Studies at Ohio University and author of Defining New Yorker Humor (2000).

"Next time someone tells you women aren't funny, give them this book and watch them try not to laugh!" -- Katha Pollitt, Nation Columnist

Customer Reviews

A wonderful, vivid overview.
FUNNY LADIES: THE NEW YORKER'S GREATEST WOMEN CARTOONISTS AND THEIR CARTOONS could easily have been featured in our 'Cartoons and Graphic Novels' section, but is reviewed here for its ability to appeal beyond the usual confines of the cartoonist fan's world. Over the decades a growing core of female artists has been creating New Yorker cartoons weekly: Liza Donnelly, herself a New Yorker cartoonist for over twenty years, provides a history of women's humor and its evolution, pairing an anthology of cartoons with a survey of the genre in a wonderful, vivid overview.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

fascinating history of women in an unusual niche
This is not a cartoon collection, it's a history - but it does include cartoons by every one of the cartoonists mentioned. It slightly before the founding of The New Yorker, with how the magazine came to be, and how Ross's independent wife (her name was Jane Grant, and she didn't change it when she got married) was an influence on what he expected the readership of the magazine to be, and who he would accept as writers and illustrators.

Some of the highlights: learning more about Helen Hokinson, much of whose stuff is still funny; the sad fate of Mary Petty. There was a little too much about Donnelly herself in there, but I guess I can understand the impulse. This really did bring out some of the developments in the glass ceiling for particular kinds of women artists.

When one thinks about WW2, and women filling jobs that used to be men's, one thinks of Rosie the Riveter - until I read this book, it had not occurred to me that women also filled the men's jobs as cartoonists at The New Yorker! The section on the war era includes some of the funniest cartoons.

Of course Roz Chast is included in here - quite possibly my favorite contemporary cartoonist. I greatly enjoyed the details about how she got into cartooning, and seeing how changes in her own stages of life have made it into her cartoons.

I think the book as a whole is the same sort of mix as the magazine - interesting articles, punctuated by cartoons. So if you like the magazine, you should enjoy the book!

Complete, funny and amazing
Liza Donnelly has written a great book, a book I have been waiting for. I'm embarrassed to say it's been out a while and I've just discovered it... but Funny Ladies is well researched, well-written, funny and enlightening. The history of women cartoonists at the New Yorker follows the history of women in the 20th century, and reading this book is and eye-opener on both levels. I was thrilled to learn more about cartoonists I'd heard of and discover ones I had not. And learning more about the founders of the New Yorker, Harold Ross and Jane Grant, plus the role cartoon editors there have played over time, is enlightening.

A great book, great read, great find.

Thanks to the cartoonist/author. There are precious few of us, and I'm so happy you preserved this portion of our history.