Charles Battell Loomis

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1861, Charles Battell Loomis was educated at the Polytechnic Institute there. He worked in business for a number of years before leaving it behind in the early 1890s to devote himself fully to writing.

He became known as a humorist, lecturer, and magazine writer, contributing sketches and other pieces that were praised for their playful tone. His books included Just Rhymes, The Cheerful Americans, and A Holiday with the Birds, showing the range of his light verse, comic prose, and travel writing.

Loomis died in 1911. Though he is not as widely read now as some of his contemporaries, he remains an appealing figure from the lively world of American magazine humor at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.