Archy, a New York City cockroach, and Mehitabel, a New York City alley cat, were characters created by “The Evening Sun” columnist Donald Robert Perry Marquis. The subject of hundreds of humorous poems and stories, Archy is portrayed as having been a free verse poet in a previous life who takes to writing stories and poems on an old typewriter at the office of a newspaper after everyone has gone home. Archy’s best friend is the alley cat Mehitabel with whom the cockroach shares a series of daily adventures which serve as a satiric commentary on the daily life of New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. Archy’s poems are notable for the fact that they don’t use capital letters since as a cockroach he cannot simultaneously hold down the shift key while he hurls himself at the keys to type away on the old typewriter. Don Marquis’s Archy and Mehitabel poems were first published as a collection in 1927. This edition reproduces that first collection.
