1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bunner, Henry Cuyler

BUNNER, HENRY CUYLER (1855–1896), American writer, was born in Oswego, New York, on the 3rd of August 1855. He was educated in New York City. From being a clerk in an importing house, he turned to journalism, and after some work as a reporter, and on the staff of the Arcadian (1873), he became in 1877 assistant editor of the comic weekly Puck. He soon assumed the editorship, which he held until his death in Nutley, N.J., on the 11th of May 1896. He developed Puck from a new struggling periodical into a powerful social and political organ. In 1886 he published a novel, The Midge, followed in 1887 by The Story of a New York House. But his best efforts in fiction were his short stories and sketches—Short Sixes (1891), More Short Sixes (1894), Made in France (1893), Zadoc Pine and Other Stories (1891), Love in Old Cloathes and Other Stories (1896), and Jersey Street and Jersey Lane (1896). His verses—Airs from Arcady and Elsewhere (1884), containing the well-known poem, The Way to Arcady; Rowen (1892); and Poems (1896), edited by his friend Brander Matthews—display a light play of imagination and a delicate workmanship. He also wrote clever vers de société and parodies. Of his several plays (usually written in collaboration), the best was The Tower of Babel (1883).