Charles Dudley Warner

Charles Dudley Warner co-edited the Hartford Courant from 1867 and became one of the best-known American essayists of his generation, on the strength of gently comic books such as My Summer in a Garden and Being a Boy. He was Mark Twain’s Hartford neighbour, close friend and collaborator — the two wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-day (1873) together, and gave an era its name. His wit survives mostly as remembered talk rather than printed text, which is precisely how his most famous line came loose from him.