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A Glimpse of Dorothy Parker's Life Essay examples

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A Glimpse of Dorothy Parker's Life

Dorothy Rothschild, later to become the famous writer Dorothy Parker, was born on August 22, 1893 to J. Henry Rothschild and Eliza A (Marston) Rothschild in West End, New Jersey. Parker’s father, Mr. Rothschild, was a Jewish business man while Mrs. Rothschild, in contrast, was of Scottish descent. Parker was the youngest of four; her only sister Helen was 12 and her two brothers, Harold and Bertram, were aged 9 and 6, respectively. Just before her fifth birthday, Dorothy’s mother became very ill and died on July 20, 1897. Three years later in 1900, Mr. Rothschild remarried to a 48 year-old spinster widow, Eleanor Frances Lewis, who Dorothy referred to as “the housekeeper.” The new Mrs. …show more content…

Her husband, Eddie, served in the armed forces and after being stationed at various bases in the US, he was shipped off to war and also had to remain after the war for the occupation in Europe. Another big step in Dorothy’s career occurred shortly soon after, she replaced P.G. Wodehouse as a drama reviewer for Vanity Fair, the sister magazine of Vogue. Because of their long separation and both developing into different people, when Eddie returned from the war things were not the same. However, they stayed together and Dorothy continued to publish several works as well as pursuing an active role in the literary social scene of New York City. In the end though, after two failed suicide attempts and the continuation of her gaining a greater sense of self and knowledge, Dorothy eventually divorced Eddie in March of 1928.

Before marrying her second husband, Alan Campbell in June of 1934, Parker went through two more failed suicide attempts (in 1930 and 1932) and published Death and Taxes (1931), a collection of poems, and two sets of stories, Laments of the Living (193) and After Such Pleasures (1933). For the next several years, Dorothy became very successful as a screenwriter in Hollywood and continued publishing works and contributed to as well as worked for literary magazines. In 1947, Dorothy divorced Campbell, but three years later they remarried in 1950.

For the rest of her life,

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