Goops
Encyclopedia
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, art critic
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...
, poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
and humorist, Gelett Burgess
Gelett Burgess
Frank Gelett Burgess was an artist, art critic, poet, author and humorist. An important figure in the San Francisco Bay Area literary renaissance of the 1890s, particularly through his iconoclastic little magazine, The Lark, he is best known as a writer of nonsense verse...
. The characters debuted, conceptually, in the illustrations of Burgess' publication, The Lark, in the late 19th century. The Goops series is among his most famous works.
- The Goops they lick their fingers,
- and the Goops they lick their knives;
- They spill their broth on the tablecloth,
- Oh, they lead disgusting lives!
Since the publication of the original Goops book, Goops and How to Be Them in 1900, the series has come to be seen as the quintessential series on teaching children the importance of manners and polite behavior.
- When you are playing with the girls,
- you must not pull their pretty curls;
- if you are gentle when you play,
- you will be glad of it some day!
Though widely circulated during the height of Burgess' popularity, some of the Goops books have become difficult to find. Goops, and How to Be Them, and More Goops, and How Not to Be Them are still widely available. Out-of-print titles such as Goops Encyclopedia and Blue Goops and Red may be found in rare book rooms and antiquarian bookstores.
In addition to the books, Burgess created the syndicated comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
Goops in 1924 and worked on it through its end in 1925.
Books
- Goops, and How to Be Them (1900) Juvenile
- More Goops, and How Not to Be Them (1903) Juvenile
- Goop Tales (1904) Juvenile
- Blue Goops and Red (1909) Juvenile
- The Goop Directory of Juvenile Offenders (1913) Juvenile
- Why Be A Goop? (1924) Juvenile
- New Goops and How to Know Them (1951) Juvenile