Ogden Nash

Frederic Ogden Nash was born on August 19, 1902, in Rye, New York, on Milton Point, the son of Mattie Chenault and Edmund Strudwick Nash. His father operated a turpentine company, and business obligations caused the family to relocate frequently during Nash's childhood. Among their residences was a carriage house in Savannah, Georgia, owned by Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA. Nash was descended from Abner Nash, an early governor of North Carolina, and the city of Nashville, Tennessee, takes its name from Abner's brother Francis, a general in the Revolutionary War.

Nash attended St. George's School in Newport County, Rhode Island, and entered Harvard University in 1920, leaving after one year. He briefly taught at St. George's before returning to New York, where he attempted a career selling bonds. He later took a position writing streetcar card advertisements for Barron Collier, a company that had also employed F. Scott Fitzgerald. While working as an editor at Doubleday, Nash submitted short rhymes to The New Yorker, prompting editor Harold Ross to request more work. Nash spent three months in 1931 on the editorial staff of that magazine. That same year he published his first poetry collection, Hard Lines, which brought him national recognition, and he married Frances Leonard of Baltimore.

Nash became widely recognized as a poet of light verse, ultimately producing more than 500 pieces. His work was characterized by unconventional rhyming schemes, deliberate misspellings, and invented words deployed when suitable rhymes did not exist. Among his most popular writings were animal verses employing these off-kilter devices, including the often-quoted lines "If called by a panther / Don't anther" and a three-stanza meditation on lamas and llamas. He also wrote humorous poems for each movement of Camille Saint-Saëns's orchestral suite The Carnival of the Animals; Columbia Records produced an original recording of this version in the 1940s with Noël Coward reciting the poems and Andre Kostelanetz conducting. Nash published the best of his work across 14 volumes between 1931 and 1972, and his poems were frequently anthologized, appearing in serious collections such as Selden Rodman's 1946 A New Anthology of Modern Poetry. Beyond publishing, he made guest appearances on comedy and radio programs and lectured at colleges and universities throughout the United States and the United Kingdom.

In 1934, Nash moved his family to his in-laws' mansion in Guilford, Baltimore, Maryland, where he remained for the rest of his life. He regarded Baltimore as his permanent home. His daughter Isabel married photographer Frederick Eberstadt, and his other daughter, Linell Nash Smith, was also an author. His grandchildren include author Fernanda Eberstadt, author Frances R. Smith, and political economist Nicholas Eberstadt.

Nash's Broadway career encompassed work as both a composer and book writer. He served as lyricist for the 1943 musical One Touch of Venus, collaborating with librettist S. J. Perelman and composer Kurt Weill; the production included the song "Speak Low." His Broadway credits also include the revue Hey Nonny Nonny!, the musical The Littlest Rebel, the show Company, and the revue Nash at Nine, which set a selection of his poems to music by Milton Rosenstock and premiered at the Helen Hayes Theatre. Nash additionally wrote lyrics for the 1952 revue Two's Company.

In December 1968, Life magazine devoted a feature to Nash and his devotion to the Baltimore Colts, pairing his poems about the football team with photographs by Arthur Rickerby. The issue described him as "the league leading writer of light verse" and included verses referencing players such as Dennis Gaubatz, Jimmy Orr, Billy Ray Smith, Bubba Smith, Willie Richardson, Dick Szymanski, and Lou Michaels.

Nash died on May 19, 1971, at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore from Crohn's disease. He is buried in East Cemetery in North Hampton, New Hampshire. At the time of his death, The New York Times described his droll verse with its unconventional rhymes as having made him the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry.