Irwin Leslie Gordon

Born on October 24, 1888, and dying on July 21, 1954, Irwin Leslie Gordon was an American author and editor whose surviving reputation rests mainly on light, witty books rather than a large, famous body of fiction. The works most consistently linked to him in library and bookseller records are Who Was Who 5000 B.C. to Date: Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be and The Log of the Ark.

Those titles suggest the kind of writer he was: playful, satirical, and interested in parody. Who Was Who reads like a mock reference book, while The Log of the Ark was created with illustrator Alfred Joseph Frueh, pointing to a lively partnership between words and visual humor.

Reliable biographical detail beyond the basic dates is limited in the sources readily available online, so much of Gordon's life now survives through catalog records and reprints rather than long modern biographies. Even so, his books have endured as small curiosities of American humor, with enough charm to keep readers and archival projects bringing them back into print.