Irvin S. Cobb

Irvin S. Cobb, whose full name was Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb, moved from Kentucky newspapers to national reporting, magazine work, fiction and screenwriting. Born in Paducah in 1876, he began as a local reporter and later joined Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. He also reported from Europe during the First World War. Cobb’s Anatomy is comic prose, while Sundry Accounts, From Place to Place and The Escape of Mr. Trimm gather short fiction. Before his death in 1944, he also wrote newspaper columns, stage work and scripts. He became widely known for humour drawn from speech, place and everyday observation, an approach he carried across these different forms.