author
Ike Swift
Best known as a pen name used by dramatist Owen Davis, this byline appeared on lively New York sketches first published in the Police Gazette. The work offers a colorful glimpse of turn-of-the-century city life and the fast-moving popular writing world Davis came from.
1 Audiobook
Sketches of Gotham
by Ike Swift
About the author
Ike Swift was a pseudonym used by Owen Davis (1874–1956), a hugely prolific American playwright and screenwriter. Before World War I, Davis wrote brisk, sensational sketches of New York nightlife and lowlife for the Police Gazette under the name Ike Swift, often setting them in Manhattan's Tenderloin district.
That pen name is now most closely linked with Sketches of Gotham, a collection that preserves those vivid city pieces. Davis later became far better known under his own name, building a major career in theater and eventually winning the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Icebound.
So while Ike Swift was not a separate literary figure in the usual sense, the name captures an early, energetic side of Owen Davis's writing life: popular, streetwise, and deeply tied to old New York.