Rudolph Edgar Block Explained
| Rudolph Edgar Block[1] [2] |
| Birth Date: | 6 December 1870 |
| Birth Place: | New York City |
| Death Place: | Tucson, Arizona |
| Occupation: | journalist, columnist, author |
| Spouse: | Eleanor Block |
| Children: | Rudolph,[3] Albert |
Rudolph Edgar Block (December 6, 1870 – April 29, 1940) was a Jewish American journalist, columnist, and author. Much of his writing was done under the pen name of Bruno Lessing.[4]
Biography
Rudolph Block began his career as a journalist in 1888. He worked first as a news reporter on The New York Sun and later joined The New York World. In 1896 he became the editor of the comic supplements to the Hearst newspapers,[4] a position he held for the next 28 years.[1] During his tenure he supplied text for The Yellow Kid[5] and helped to create such popular series as Happy Hooligan and The Katzenjammer Kids.[1] As "Bruno Lessing" his short stories chronicled life in the Jewish ghetto of New York City.[6] Between 1905 and 1909, many of these tales were published by Cosmopolitan, which at that time was a literary magazine.[7] During the years 1915 - 1916 he also wrote a number of screenplays depicting the Jewish American experience.[8]
Ambrose Bierce, another frequent contributor to Cosmopolitan,[9] mentioned Block in his satirical work The Devil's Dictionary, recounting the author's alleged encounter with a prominent critic.[10] A short poem by Bierce, titled "Rudolph Block", had no apparent connection to the man himself.[11]
An avid traveler, Block wrote about his experiences in the daily newspaper column "Vagabondia", which was published from 1928 through 1939.[12] [13] Along the way he amassed a collection of 1,400 walking sticks, although he himself walked unaided.[14] After his death, the collection of canes, each made from a unique type of wood, was donated to Yale University.[15]
Selected works
- 1903 Children of Men [16]
- 1909 Jake or Sam
- 1914 With the Best Intention
External links
- Articles
- "The End of the Task"
Notes and References
- William J. Burling, Bruno Lessing, vol. 28 of Dictionary of Literary Biography, (Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1984), pp. 133–136.
- https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19400502&id=lJ1aAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Rk0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6599,280228 St. Petersburg Times May 2, 1940
- http://www.jta.org/1934/04/02/archive/bruno-lessings-son-gets-post-in-seattle Bruno Lessing's Son Gets Post In Seattle
- [:fr:Rudolph Edgar Block|Rudolph Edgar Block]
- http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma04/wood/ykid/highart.htm Around the World With The Yellow Kid
- https://books.google.com/books?id=ze40JaU4aKcC&dq=bruno+lessing+the+americanization+of+shadrach+cohen&pg=PA62 The International Story by Ruth Spack, (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1994) p. 62.
- https://books.google.com/books?id=pvw2pDaZPiEC&dq=Bruno+Lessing+Jewish+ghetto&pg=PA242 The Dream Of A New Social Order by Matthew Schneirov, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994) p. 242.
- https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0504362/ Bruno Lessing
- https://books.google.com/books?id=ESpUXpqO55QC&dq=rudolph+block+devil%27s+dictionary&pg=PA340 Ambrose Bierce
- http://dd.pangyre.org/s/story.html Definition of the word "story"
- https://books.google.com/books?id=LeIQAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22What+parallel,+neighbor,+be+pleased+to+expound%22&pg=PA373 Shapes Of Clay, vol. 4 of The Collected Works Of Ambrose Bierce, (New York & Washington: Neale Pub. Co., 1910) p. 373.
- The New York American April 5, 1935
- The Milwaukee Sentinel December 21, 1939
- https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24601718M/Catalogue_of_a_private_collection_of_walking_sticks Catalogue Of A Private Collection Of Walking Sticks
- http://lumberjocks.com/mmh/blog/8996 Rudolph Block's Collection: Canes Of Various Woods
- https://books.google.com/books?id=mm9AmF1bSD4C&dq=Children+of+Men+Bruno+Lessing&pg=PT35 American Jewish Fiction by Josh Lambert, (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2009) pp. 19–20.
