David Ross Locke

author

David Ross Locke

1833–1888

Best known for the razor-sharp "Petroleum V. Nasby" letters, this newspaper editor turned Civil War-era politics into biting comedy. His satire was widely read in its day and helped make him one of the most recognizable humorists of nineteenth-century America.

2 Audiobooks

Nasby in Exile or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel

Nasby in Exile or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel

by David Ross Locke

"Swingin round the cirkle" : His ideas of men, politics, and things, as set forth in his letters to the public press, during the year 1866.

"Swingin round the cirkle" : His ideas of men, politics, and things, as set forth in his letters to the public press, during the year 1866.

by David Ross Locke

About the author

Born in New York in 1833, he left school young and learned the printer’s trade before building a career in journalism. He worked at newspapers in New York and Ohio, and while editing the Findlay Jeffersonian he created the comic persona Petroleum V. Nasby, an ignorant, swaggering pro-slavery preacher whose fake letters skewered Copperhead politics and Confederate sympathizers.

The Nasby letters made him famous during and after the Civil War. Their mix of dialect, absurdity, and political attack gave him real influence in public debate, and he later became closely associated with The Toledo Blade, where he served as editor and owner.

Remembered today as both a journalist and a satirist, he published under his own name and under his better-known pseudonym. He died in Toledo, Ohio, in 1888, but his work remains a vivid example of how humor was used as a political weapon in nineteenth-century America.