James Reid Parker papers

James Reid Parker was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, on June 2, 1909, to James A. and Rebecca Ives Parker. He received his B.A. from Lafayette College, and an M.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University in 1931. He became a regular contributor of light humorous pieces to The New Yorker magazine beginning in 1930, and wrote a column entitled "Small World," for Woman's Day from the 1940s to the early 1960s. Many of his New Yorker stories were published as anthologies, including Academic Procession and Attorneys at Law, and he published a novel, The Merry Wives of Massachusetts, in 1959. At The New Yorker, he worked closely with cartoonist Helen E. Hokinson, writing captions for her cartoons from the 1930s until her death in a plane crash in 1949. Parker served as one of the executors and trustees of Hokinson's estate, and as such published a collection of her work entitled The Hokinson Festival in 1956.

Parker married Ruth Lerrigo in 1940, and served in the Army Intelligence Service in Washington during World War II. Following the war, the Parkers lived on Nantucket for some years before moving to New York City. In the 1960s they moved to Hamden, Connecticut, where Parker died on January 27, 1984.