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Ellis Parker Butler, a humorist writer, was born in Muscatine, Iowa, a booming town alongside the Mississippi River, on December 5th, 1869.  Butler was the eldest child of eight born to Audley Gazzam Butler and Adella Vessey Butler.  The family faced a major financial crisis in his sixth year when the family pork packing business failed, sending Butler to live with his aunt where he was homeschooled. This move was also the result of Butler’s weak heart and the health issues that arose from it.^[1] Eventually, his family raised enough money to send him to high school, but he left after the first year in order to provide support for his siblings. From 1886 to 1897, Butler worked in town as a bill clerk, a salesman, and an assistant bookkeeper for different shops, all the while maintaining his interest in writing.

While growing up,  Butler claimed, “The three greatest influences on my work were my aunt Lizzie Butler and my high school English teacher, who gave me an admiration and appreciation of literature, and my father who was an enthusiastic admirer of Mark Twain and the other humorists of the day”.^[2] Twain, an iconic American literary figure well known for writing the novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), lived in Muscatine for a brief time, and Robert Burdette, a humorist popular at the time for his writing in The Hawkeye newspaper in Burlington, Iowa, about sixty miles away from the Butler home.^[3] Drawing on these influences, Parker he created the pseudonym, Elpabu, which includes the first two letters from each of his names, to write the newspaper series “Letters from a Talking Woman.” At night, Butler slipped these letters under the door of the Muscatine News. Later, the paper’s editor discovered Elpabu’s identity when Butler began to submit his series, “The Mystery of the Unhandsome Cab” in person. After this discovery, the Cedar Rapids Gazette published a positive editorial about Butler, which the Muscatine newspaper reprinted under the title “Iowa’s Literary Promise,” recognizing Butler’s potential as an Iowan writer and serving to boost his confidence ^[4] Parker was then offered an editorial position for the Muscatine News, which he declined once he realized how difficult the duties and required business schooling would be for an 18-year-old to shoulder. Thus, ego deflated once again, he found work as an assistant bookkeeper to his father and, nonetheless, continued to send short stories to important journals such as Midland Monthly and the magazines Boston National, New York Truth, and New York Life, seeking recognition well beyond Muscatine.

In 1897, Butler moved to New York City, convinced his destiny lay in writing for the prestigious Century Magazine, as he had been so advised by three New York editors and received an offer of a writing position at the magazine in 1896.^[5] Also in 1896, Century Magazine published his story “My Cyclone Proof House”, one of the first pieces for which he was fully paid. Unfortunately, upon his arrival in New York, the writing position was no longer available. The loss of this job left Butler with a severe case of writer’s block that did not clear until his savings ran out months later and he took up advertising sales.^[6] In 1899, he returned to Muscatine to marry Ida Zipsler, ten years his junior, whom he had met and committed to years prior. The couple then moved to New York where in 1900 he co-established the magazine Upholstery Dealer and Decorative Furnisher with Thomas A. Cawthra. It was not until 1905 that his writing career began to take off with the publication of the short story “Pigs is Pigs,” a humorous tale of breeding guinea pigs for sale. The story became an overnight sensation; it was published as a novel the following year and sold millions of copies. In 1954, “Pig is Pigs” was made into a cartoon^[7] by Walt Disney and was nominated for an Academy Award for Animated Short Film, further establishing the story as Butler’s iconic piece. With Butler’s newfound success, his stories began appearing in popular magazines of the time, such as Ladies’ Home Journal, American Boy, The American Magazine, and The Saturday Evening Post. 

Over his lifetime, Butler published approximately forty books and over 2,000 short stories. Some of his notable works include The Great American Pie Company (1907), The Jack-Knife Man (1917), the Jibby Jones adventure series (the 1920s), and Dominie Dean (1917). Butler’s writing is subtly humorous and set in different Midwestern locations, particularly the Muscatine of his youth. Because many of his books and stories were made into successful films and cartoons, Butler was prosperous enough to travel with his family around the world. His boyhood novels like the Jibby Jones adventure series were particularly popular and provide detail of the life of a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River. Beyond comedic value, much of Butler’s writing examines Midwestern society–in particular, the impact of religion, family dynamics, economics, and social roles. Parker breathes new life into scenes set in Iowa of long ago and through this recreates the past in a new light. His success led him to co-found several author’s organizations, including the Author’s League of America in 1912, an organization founded to prevent plagiarism between authors that still exists today as the Author’s Guild.  Parker served as president of both these professional organizations, which allowed him to meet writers from all over the country and is an indication of his status as a well-known writer of the time. ^[8]

Butler also held a New York City banking job, ensuring that his family had a source of income should his writing fall through. In 1913, after the birth of his fifth child (four survived beyond early childhood), he was made Vice President of the Flushing National Bank. He remained as Vice President until 1930 when he became the Director of the bank. Several articles appeared in the New York Times discussing Parker’s active community involvement; for instance, he led the push to provide the neighborhood of Flushing with sidewalks.^[9] In 1936, Butler was named President of the Flushing Savings and Loan Association.  Later, he moved permanently to his Massachusetts summer home with his wife. Parker’s death in 1937 due to the complications of both diabetes and cancer left many readers, colleagues, and neighbors heartbroken, and several newspapers, including The New York Times, published his obituary. ^[10] Over 200 people attended his funeral in the following days, fully demonstrating how beloved the writer was within his community.

Unfortunately, there is no memorial or plaque in commemoration of Butler within Iowa or New York.  However, in 1938, the Federal Writers' Project listed Butler’s New York City home as a landmark.  When Butler had earlier searched for a memorial near his old Muscatine home, he had only found a plaque labeled ICE, which did not stand for “In Commemoration of Ellis Parker Butler” as he initially had hoped, but instead was simply a location that sold ice.^[11] Butler’s work was widely published during his lifetime and is well documented in anthologies of Midwestern writing.  So, while he may have been honored in Iowa by a memorial or a plaque, he nonetheless holds the place of a beloved author who wrote memorably and humorously of Midwestern life on the Mississippi River.

Sources: 

Andrews, Clarence A. A Literary History of Iowa. University of Iowa Press, 1972. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/book/3537.

Bergman, Marvin, et al. The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa. Published for the State Historical Society of Iowa by the University of Iowa Press, 2008.  University of Iowa Press Digital Editions http://uipress.lib.uiowa.edu/bdi/

“E. P. BUTLER DEAD; NOTED HUMORIST; His ‘Pigs Is Pigs’ Made Nation Laugh Thirty Years AgoAuthor of 32 Books WROTE POETRY AS CHILD Had Served as Bank Executive in Flushing, Where He Lived 30 Years–Succumbs at 67 Wrote ‘Pigs Is Pigs’ in 1906 A Youthful Stamp Collector Took the Editor’s Advice Aided Hospital Drive.” The New York Times. The New York Times, September 14, 1937. https://www.nytimes.com/1937/09/14/archives/e-p-butler-dead-noted-humorist-his-pigs-is-pigs-made-nation-laugh.html?searchResultPosition=13.

 “ELLIS PARKER BUTLER QUITS.; Writing? No! No! But the Satanic Job of Giving Flushing Sidewalks.” The New York Times. The New York Times, February 4, 1911. https://www.nytimes.com/1911/02/04/archives/ellis-parker-butler-quits-writing-no-no-but-the-satanic-job-of.html?searchResultPosition=8.

Greasley, Philip A., editor.  Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume 1: Authors.  Indiana University Press, 2001. ProQuest, https://grinnell.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01GCL_INST/1ek0oud/alma991011050969204641.

Harper, Katherine. “In Commemoration of Ellis: The Iowa Beginnings of a Great American Humorist.” Iowa Heritage Illustrated 84, no. 3 (2003).

Kunitz, Stanley J.,ed.  Authors Today and Yesterday : a Companion Volume to Living Authors. New York (State): The H. W. Wilson company, 1938, 1938.