Nash O
Nash, Frederic Ogden
ACHIEVEMENTS: Poet and writer of children’s books whose works are still being reprinted.
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None.
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: 19th Aug. 1902, Rye, NY.
DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: 19th May 1971, Baltimore, MD. Age 68.
DISCIPLINE: Writer
FIELD: Literature
LANGUAGE: English.
PARENTS: Father, Edmund Strudwick Nash; mother, Mathilde (Mattie) Chenault
SIBLINGS: Born fourth among five children; two sisters and two brothers.
SPOUSE: Married Frances Rider Leonard on June 6, 1931.
CHILDREN: Linell Chenault and Isabel Jackson.
EDUCATION: St. George's School, Newport, Rhode Island, 1917-20; Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1920-21.
MAJOR WORK:
Custard the Dragon (1959)
LIFE AND TIMES:
American humorist Frederic Ogden Nash was born on Aug. 19, 1902 into a distinguished family. His paternal great-great-grandfather was governor of North Carolina during the Revolution, and that ancestor's brother was General Francis Nash, for whom Nashville, Tennessee, was named.
Thanks to the family’s work in import/export Nash moved often as a child.
He once described his accent as “"Clam chowder… with a little Savannah.”
In 1920 he entered Harvard University but left after a year to get a job when his family ran into financial problems. Nash first tried teaching at St. George’s, the secondary school he had attended as a child, but fled a year later "because [he] lost [his] entire nervous system carving lamb for a table of fourteen-year-olds."
He tried selling bonds on Wall Street but sold only one in 18 months (to his godmother). Then he wrote streetcar advertising for Barron Collier, and in 1925 he joined the advertising department at Doubleday, Page.
That year, Nash co-wrote a children’s book called ‘The Cricket of Carador’ with his friend, Joseph Alger. His second book published in 1930 was also a joint effort, a satire that parodies various forms of serious literature, co-written with Christopher Morley and Cleon Throckmorton. The first humorous poem he published occurred to him one summer afternoon in 1930 as he gazed out his office window. He had tossed the paper on which he’d written the poem into a trash can but later retrieved it, gave the poem a title, and mailed it to The New Yorker.
After a short stint as a manuscript reader for Farrar, Rinehart, Nash started working full time for The New Yorker, but quit after three months because he made more money publishing on a freelance basis. In 1931 he published his first solo effort, ‘Hard Lines’, and started a prolific 40-year writing career that included not only poetry but also children’s books such as the popular Custard the Dragon series.
In 1943 Nash collaborated with Perelman* and Weill* on the Broadway musical ‘One Touch of Venus' (which was made into a movie in 1948). Nash co-wrote the book (with Perelman) and the lyrics to accompany Weill’s musical score. The two-act play opens with a chorus singing a comic song which is used to set the tone. Altogether there are fourteen songs, the most famous of which is "Speak Low". Other projects include writing verses for Saint-Saens's 'Carnival of the Animals,' Prokofiev's 'Peter and the Wolf,' and Dukas's 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice.'
But Nash is still best known for his humorous verse, which stretched the rules of grammar, spelling, rhythm, and rhyme, and through which he good-naturedly poked fun at human foibles. His best known verse is probably 'Candy / Is dandy / But liquor / Is quicker.’ Other favorites include 'The cow is of the bovine ilk; / one end is moo, the other, milk' and 'Oh what a tangled web do parents weave / when they think that their children are naive.'
Nash’s books sold well and he was able to support his family. Despite his success, Nash was always afraid that the poem he had just sold would be the last, so he often made guest appearances on radio and television programs such as 'Information, Please' and 'Masquerade Party’, and toured the country for two or three months at a time giving lectures and readings, some of which have been recorded.
Nash received the Sarah Josepha Hale Award in 1964 and was a member of both the National Institute and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lived in New York City for many years and kept a summer house on the coast of New Hampshire, where he swam everyday in the 50-degree water, but his true home was in Baltimore, MD, where he was an avid fan of the Orioles, the Colts, and Pimlico.
During the last eight years of his life, he became one of the first residents of the Village of Cross Keys, one of James Rouse's experiments in planned development.
Nash died of heart failure on May 19, 1971, in Baltimore and was buried in Little River Cemetery, North Hampton, NH.
ASSESSMENT: Ogden Nash is best known as a writer of humorous poetry.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: Ogden Nash, famous humorous poet
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
A Tribute to the Poet, Ogden Nash, http://www.aenet.org/poems/ognash1.htm
Biography.com: Ogden Nash, http://search.biography.com/print_record.pl?id=17947
Children’s Books: http://hallkidsillustrators.com/N/4.shtml
Crandell, G. W. Ogden Nash; A Descriptive Bibliography, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, New Jersey, 1990.
Literature Online (database), Ogden Nash, http://lion.chadwyck.com
Literature Resource Center (database), Contemporary Authors Online, Christopher Morley, http://www.galenet.com
Literature Resource Center (database), Contemporary Authors Online, Ogden Nash, http://www.galenet.com
Literature Resource Center (database), Contemporary Authors Online, S.J. Perelma, http://www.galenet.com
MDSOS Kids’ Page, http://www.sos.state.md.us/sos/kids/html/nash.html
The Rouse Company, http://www.therousecompany.com/
Teacher Resource File, http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/nash~.htm