Ward, Artemus, pseud. of Charles Farrar Browne, 1834–67, American humorist, b. Waterford, Maine. As a reporter on the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he began in 1858 a series of “Artemus Ward's Letters” that made him famous on both sides of the Atlantic. The letters were supposedly written by a carnival manager who commented on current events in a New England dialect that was augmented by bad grammar and misspelled words. In 1859, Browne joined the staff of the New York humorous weekly Vanity Fair and later turned successfully to lecturing.
See his Selected Works (ed. by A. J. Nock, 1924); biography by J. C. Austin (1964).
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