Robert Henry Newell was a popular 19th century American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 humorist.

During the U.S. Civil War, Newell wrote a series of satirical articles using the pseudonym Orpheus C. Kerr, commenting on the war and contemporary society. His articles appeared weekly in the New York Sunday Mercury

Sunday Mercury (New York)

The Sunday Mercury was a weekly Sunday newspaper published in New York City that grew to become the highest-circulation weekly newspaper in the United States at its peak...

, where he was the literary editor until 1862, and were published in a series of books. Among other newspapers he worked at, from 1869-74 he wrote for the New York World

New York World

The New York World was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers...

. From ~1862-65, he was married to famous actress Adah Isaacs Menken

Adah Isaacs Menken

Adah Isaacs Menken was an American actress, painter and poet.-Life and career:There are significant inconsistencies in the various accounts of Menken's early life. In her autobiographical "Some Notes of her life in her own Hand,", Menken claimed she was born Marie Rachel Adelaide de Vere Spenser...

.

The name "Orpheus C. Kerr" was a play on the term "office seeker". At the time, political offices were seen as plums, involving relatively little work and regular pay, and were used by political parties as rewards for faithful party workers.

During the war, The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers was widely read and Newell enjoyed great popularity. He was one of the favorite humorists of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

. When General Montgomery C. Meigs

Montgomery C. Meigs

Montgomery Cunningham Meigs was a career United States Army officer, civil engineer, construction engineer for a number of facilities in Washington, D.C., and Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army during and after the American Civil War....

 admitted that he had never heard of Orpheus C. Kerr or his Papers, Lincoln responded, “anyone who has not read them is a heathen.”

Selected bibliography

• The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers (1862) (Letters 1-52)
• The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers (Volume II)(1863) (Letters 53-79)
• The Palace Beautiful and Other Poems (1864)
• The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers (Volume III)(1865) (Letters 80-108)
• Avery Glibun, or Between Two Fires (1867)
• Smoked Glass (1868)
• The Cloven Foot (1870) (a parody of The Mystery of Edwin Drood
  The Mystery of Edwin Drood
  The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens. The novel was left unfinished at the time of Dickens' death, and his intended ending for it remains unknown. Though the novel is named after the character Edwin Drood, the story focuses on Drood's uncle, choirmaster John Jasper, who...
  
  by Charles Dickens
  Charles Dickens
  Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
  
  )
• Versatilities (poems) (1871)
• The Walking Doll; or the Asters and Disasters of Society (1872)
• Studies in Stanzas (1882)
• There was once a Man (1884)

External links

• The Orpheus C. Kerr papers (1862), American Libraries Internet Archive
• The Palance Beautiful and Other Poems (1864) (full text)