The New Yorker

This website is owned and maintained by Mark Warby

mark@brucebairnsfather.org.uk

In February 1929, BB submitted three cartoons to the New Yorker magazine, which he felt were “in tune” with the magazine’s requirements. The New Yorker was then barely four years old. Its founding Editor was Harold W. Ross, who had started his career as an during the First World War, when he joined the staff of the US forces weekly paper Stars & Stripes shortly after publication began in February 1918, and became its Managing Editor in the same month as the Armistice.

Cartoons, cover drawings and other illustrative contributions were appraised at a weekly art meeting headed by Ross. Of the three drawings submitted by BB, one was accepted. In rejecting the others, Ross wrote to BB: “It was a matter of subject. We try to have a topical journalistic value in the New Yorker and to adhere as closely as possible to our original purpose which is to reflect what goes on in town. That rules out many drawings. We heartlessly turn down ideas which are good, but which we consider outside our field.”

Between February 1929 and March 1933 BB submitted a total of around 20 drawings to the New Yorker. Of these, fourteen were published—the last on 15 August 1931. All those which appeared in the magazine are reproduced on this page.