C. L. Edson

Charles Leroy "C. L." Edson (September 6, 1881 – December 4, 1975), was an American newspaper columnist, humorist, and poet whose work appeared in New York papers in the first decades of the 20th century. He wrote a guide to writing newspaper humor, The Gentle Art of Columning: A Treatise on Comic Journalism (1920), and an autobiography, The Great American Ass (1926). Edson also wrote for several national publications.

Edson’s career suffered after he published his autobiography, which included an extensive personal attack on Franklin P. Adams, a New York colleague. In 1935 he joined the Federal Writers Project in Topeka, Kansas and stayed there when it ended, supporting himself with a government relief check. He died in a Topeka nursing home at the age of 94.

C. L. Edson was born in Wilber, Nebraska, son of James Bassett and Emma Lillian (Thomas) Edson, and uncle of William Alden Edson. His father was a descendant of John Alden, signatory of the Mayflower Compact. The Edson side of the family also dates to early colonial times, with Deacon Samuel Edson arriving in Salem, Massachusetts in 1639. Edson’s father was a wealthy farmer and merchant, but imposed an austere lifestyle on his family. In 1918, Edson’s mother successfully sued his father for half of his net worth.

Edson attended public schools in Cuba, Kansas, and enrolled at the University of Kansas in 1900. While there he started a literary magazine called The Automobile. He printed the magazine himself, illustrating it with woodcuts carved with a penknife. In 1901, Carl Sandburg, editor of a college literary magazine in Galesburg, Illinois, saw an issue of The Automobile. Sandburg’s Lombard Review reprinted one of Edson’s poems and, in a separate notice, praised Edson’s work. Edson and Sandburg exchanged letters, sharing an enthusiasm for the ideas of Elbert Hubbard, the poetry of Walt Whitman, and socialism. They last corresponded in 1942.

In 1905, Edson married Lena Fern Bear. That same year, he began working for the Kansas City Star, first as a reporter but soon as a humor columnist. He worked for the Star for the next two years, then moved to the Arkansas Ozarks in 1907 with the intention of starting an artists’ and writers’ colony. Although at least ten people spent time there, most soon returned to the city. Edson left but regularly returned to his farm there over the next decade, observing the customs, attitudes, and speech patterns of his rural neighbors, which formed the basis for much of his later writing.

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