Clare A. Briggs

Clare A. Briggs
Clare A. Briggs

Clare A. Briggs

American cartoonist, 1875–1930
BiographySource: askart.com and obituary in The Bend Bulletin, Jan. 4, 1930

Clare A. Briggs was born in Reedsburg, Wisconsin. His family moved to Dixon, Illinois, and then to Lincoln, Nebraska, where for two years he attended the University of Nebraska, studying drawing. He was hired by William Randolph Hearst's St. Louis Globe-Democrat as a sketch artist and then as an editorial cartoonist on location during the Spanish-American war. When he moved to New York, his drawings for the New York Journal prompted Hearst to send Briggs to the Chicago Herald and the Chicago American, where he created A. Piker Clerk, often described as the first daily continuity comic strip. After 17 years in Chicago, Briggs returned to New York to spend the remaining 13 years of his life on the New York Tribune.

Some of his best-known cartoons included Ain't It a Grand and Glorious Feeling?, Danny Dreamer, The Days of Real Sport, Movie of a Man, Mr. and Mrs, Real Folks at Home, Someone's Always Taking the Joy Out of Life, There's at Least One in Every Office and When a Feller Needs a Friend. Mr. and Mrs. ran during the last years of his life and continued in syndication after his death under his name; the names of successor artists Arthur Folwell and Ellison Hoover finally appeared on the strip in 1938.


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