Carl Thomas Anderson

Carl Thomas Anderson (14 February 1865 – 4 November 1948) was an American cartoonist best remembered for his comic strip Henry. Readers followed the pantomime adventures of the mute, bald-headed Henry in strips which he signed with his familiar signature displaying an enlarged "S": Carl AnderSon.

Carl Thomas Anderson was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of Norwegian immigrants. Anderson initially worked in his Norwegian immigrant father's Madison planing mill, where he developed carpentry skills, became a cabinetmaker and invented a patented folding desk, which is still being manufactured today. Near the end of the 19th century, he traveled the United States, drifting to Omaha, San Francisco and Seattle, where he worked until the city's 1889 fire.

At the age of 25, he developed a strong interest in drawing and went to Philadelphia because the Pennsylvania Museum & School of Industrial Art was the only school he found specifically advertising a pen-and-ink course. In 1894, his first art job was with the Philadelphia Times where he earned $12 a week drawing fashion illustrations.

He was hired by Arthur Brisbane for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World at the end of the 1890s. His strip The Filipino and the Chick ran on the Sunday page of the World, attracting the attention of William Randolph Hearst, who offered more money at his New York Journal. For Hearst, Anderson created Raffles and Bunny, and for the McClure Syndicate in 1903 he drew Herr Spiegelberger, the Amateur Cracksman.

Since these strips received only a mild reaction from readers, Anderson began freelancing for Judge, Life and Puck. With the Great Depression looming and his markets diminishing, Anderson was 65 years old when he left New York in 1930, returning to Madison to care for his dying father. Anderson lived in Madison with his three sisters in the house his father built at 834 Prospect Place near Lake Mendota, and he resumed his earlier trade as a cabinetmaker while teaching night classes.

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