Opie Percival Read

Born in Tennessee in 1852 and raised in Arkansas, he became one of the best-known newspaper humorists of his day. He founded and edited the Arkansas Traveler, a comic paper that grew from a local publication into a national success, and his lively voice made him famous well beyond the South.

After his newspaper years, he wrote prolifically as a novelist and magazine contributor. His books often drew on rural life, frontier manners, and Southern speech, mixing comedy with observation in a way that connected strongly with late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century readers.

He later lived and worked in Chicago, but Arkansas remained central to his identity and reputation. Today he is remembered as an important regional writer and popular entertainer whose fiction and journalism captured a vivid slice of American life.