George S. (George Shepard) Chappell

Born in New London, Connecticut, in 1877, he studied at Yale University, where he contributed to The Yale Record, and then trained in architecture in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts. Alongside his architectural career, he built a second life as a humorist, journalist, and author.

He wrote for Vanity Fair and became especially well known for comic travel spoofs published under the pseudonym Walter E. Traprock. Those books, including The Cruise of the Kawa and My Northern Exposure, helped make him a recognizable literary voice of the 1920s.

Chappell's work ranged widely, from architecture and criticism to parody and light fiction, and that mix gives his writing its charm. He died in Connecticut in 1946, remembered as a writer who could be both learned and delightfully absurd.