The Mathematical Magpie is an anthology

Anthology

An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...

 published in 1962, compiled by Clifton Fadiman

Clifton Fadiman

Clifton P. "Kip" Fadiman was an American intellectual, author, editor, radio and television personality.-Literary career:...

 as a companion volume to his Fantasia Mathematica

Fantasia Mathematica

Fantasia Mathematica is an anthology published in 1958 containing stories, humor, poems, etc., all on mathematical topics, compiled by Clifton Fadiman. A companion volume was published as The Mathematical Magpie . The volume contains writing by authors including Robert Heinlein, Aldous Huxley, H. G...

(1958). The volume contains stories, cartoons, essays, rhymes, music, anecdotes, aphorisms, and other oddments. Authors include Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...

, Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

, Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

, and many other renowned figures. A revised edition was issued in 1981.

A Set of Imaginaries

• "Cartoon" by Alan Dunn
  Alan Dunn
  Alan Dunn is a former Minor league baseball player and bullpen coach.-Playing career:Dunn was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in the fourth round of the 1983 amateur draft...
  
  
• "The Feeling of Power" by Isaac Asimov
  Isaac Asimov
  Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
  
  
• "The Law" by Robert M. Coates
• "The Appendix and the Spectacles" by Miles J. Breuer
  Miles J. Breuer
  Miles John Breuer was an American physician and science fiction writer. He was part of the first generation of writers to appear regularly in the pulp science fiction magazines, publishing his first story, "The Man with the Strange Head", in the January 1927 issue of Amazing Stories...
  
  , MD
• "Paul Bunyan
  Paul Bunyan
  Paul Bunyan is a lumberjack figure in North American folklore and tradition. One of the most famous and popular North American folklore heroes, he is usually described as a giant as well as a lumberjack of unusual skill, and is often accompanied in stories by his animal companion, Babe the Blue...
  
   Versus the Conveyor Belt" by William Hazlett Upson
• "The Pacifist" by Arthur C. Clarke
  Arthur C. Clarke
  Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein,...
  
  
• "The Hermeneutical Doughnut" by H. Nearing Jr.
• "Star, Bright" by Mark Clifton
  Mark Clifton
  Mark Clifton was an American science fiction writer. About half of his work falls into two series: the "Bossy" series, about a computer with artificial intelligence, was written either alone or in collaboration with Alex Apostolides or Frank Riley; and the "Ralph Kennedy" series, which is more...
  
  
• "'FYI"' by James Blish
  James Blish
  James Benjamin Blish was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. Blish also wrote literary criticism of science fiction using the pen-name William Atheling, Jr.-Biography:...
  
  
• "The Vanishing Man" by Richard Hughes (writer)
  Richard Hughes (writer)
  Richard Arthur Warren Hughes OBE was a British writer of poems, short stories, novels and plays.He was born in Weybridge, Surrey. His father was a civil servant Arthur Hughes, and his mother Louisa Grace Warren who had been brought up in Jamaica...
  
  
• "The Nine Billion Names of God
  The Nine Billion Names of God
  "The Nine Billion Names of God" is a 1953 science fiction short story by Arthur C. Clarke. The story was the winner of the retrospective Hugo Award for Best Short Story for the year 1954.-Plot summary:...
  
  " by Arthur C. Clarke

Comic Sections

• "Three Mathematical Diversions" by Raymond Queneau
  Raymond Queneau
  Raymond Queneau was a French poet and novelist and the co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle .-Biography:Born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, Queneau was the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot...
  
  
• "The Wonderful World of Figures" by Corey Ford
  Corey Ford
  Corey Ford was an American humorist, author, outdoorsman, and screenwriter. He was also friendly with several members of the Algonquin Round Table and occasionally ate lunch there....
  
  
• "A B and C – the Human Element in Mathematics" by Stephen Leacock
  Stephen Leacock
  Stephen Butler Leacock, FRSC was an English-born Canadian teacher, political scientist, writer, and humorist...
  
  
• "Cartoon" by Johnny Hart
  Johnny Hart
  Johnny Hart was an American cartoonist noted as the creator of the comic strip B.C. and co-creator of the strip The Wizard of Id. Hart was recognized with several awards, including the Swedish Adamson Award and five from the National Cartoonists Society...
  
  
• "A Note on the Einstein Theory by" Max Beerbohm
  Max Beerbohm
  Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson.-Early life:...
  
  
• "The Achievement of HT Wensel" by H. Allen Smith
  H. Allen Smith
  For the congressman see H. Allen SmithHarry Allen Wolfgang Smith was an American journalist and humorist whose books were popular in the 1940s and 1950s, selling millions of copies....
  
  
• "Needed: Feminine Math" by Parke Cummings
• "Cartoon" by Alfred Frueh
• "Two Extracts" by Mark Twain
  Mark Twain
  Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
  
  
• "Mathematics for Golfers" by Stephen Leacock
  Stephen Leacock
  Stephen Butler Leacock, FRSC was an English-born Canadian teacher, political scientist, writer, and humorist...
  
  
• "The Mathematician's Nightmare: The Vision of Professor Squarepunt" by Bertrand Russell
  Bertrand Russell
  Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
  
  
• "Milo and the Mathemagician
  The Phantom Tollbooth
  The Phantom Tollbooth is a children's adventure novel and modern fairy tale published in 1961, written by Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer. It tells the story of a bored young boy named Milo who unexpectedly receives a magic tollbooth one afternoon and, having nothing better to do,...
  
  " by Norton Juster
  Norton Juster
  Norton Juster is an American architect and author. He is best known as an author of children's books, including The Phantom Tollbooth and The Dot and the Line.- Biography :...
  
  

Irregular Figures

• "Cartoon" by Saul Steinberg
  Saul Steinberg
  Saul Steinberg was a Romanian-born American cartoonist and illustrator, best known for his work for The New Yorker.-Biography:...
  
  
• "Sixteen Stones" by Samuel Beckett
  Samuel Beckett
  Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
  
  
• "O'Brien's Table" by J.L. Synge
• "The Abominable Mr. Gunn" by Robert Graves
  Robert Graves
  Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
  
  
• "Coconuts" by Ben Ames Williams
  Ben Ames Williams
  Ben Ames Williams American writer who published over thirty novels, including All the Brothers Were Valiant ,Come Spring ,The Strange Woman , House Divided , Leave Her to Heaven and The Unconquered...
  
  
• "Euclid
  Euclid
  Euclid , fl. 300 BC, also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the "Father of Geometry". He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I...
  
   and the Bright Boy" by J.L. Synge
• "The Purse of Furtunatus" by Lewis Carroll
  Lewis Carroll
  Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
  
  
• "Cartoon" by Saul Steinberg
• "The Symbolic Logic of Murder" by John Reese

Simple Harmonic Motions

• "Cartoon" James Frankfort
• "The Square of the Hypotenuse" Saul Chaplin
  Saul Chaplin
  Saul Chaplin was an American composer and musical director.He was born Saul Kaplan in Brooklyn, New York.He had worked on stage, screen and television since the days of Tin Pan Alley...
  
   & Johnny Mercer
  Johnny Mercer
  John Herndon "Johnny" Mercer was an American lyricist, songwriter and singer. He is best known as a lyricist, but he also composed music. He was also a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as those written by others...
  
  
• "The Ta Ta" Joseph Charles Holbrooke & Sidney H. Sime

Dividends and Remainders

This section include a collection of poems, cartoons, anecdotes, limericks, etc.