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James Thurber was born in Columbus, Ohio, on December 8, 1894, to Charles and Mary Agnes “Mame” Thurber. His father was a civil clerk with dreams of being a lawyer or actor. Mame had a grand personality and humor that inspired James.
A childhood accident when James was seven resulted in his being permanently blind in one eye. James’s older brother William accidentally shot James in the eye while playing a game of William Tell, trying to shoot an apple off James’s head with a bow and blunt arrow. As a result, James lost his left eye and would wear a prosthetic for the rest of his life. This injury affected him as a child by limiting his participation in sports and other physical activities. Young Thurber instead turned his attention to reading, writing, and drawing. Later in life, Thurber would lose vision in his right eye due to a rare condition known as sympathetic ophthalmia in which great trauma to one eye can spread gradually to the remaining eye.
James went to school in Columbus, graduating from East High School in 1913. He enrolled in Ohio State University, also in Columbus, from 1913 to 1918. As a student, Thurber wrote for the OSU paper, The Lantern, and was editor-in-chief for the student humor magazine, The Sundial. Thurber left OSU without graduating. The college required participation in an ROTC course, which Thurber could not complete due to his disability. The college later rectified this injustice by bestowing an honorary degree upon Thurber in 1995, many years after his death.
After college, Thurber worked as a code clerk for the U.S. State Department, then as a journalist for various newspapers, including The Columbus Dispatch and the New York Evening Post. At a New York party in 1927, Thurber met E.B. White, the author best known for his children’s books Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little. White recommended Thurber to Harold Ross, the founder and editor of the recently launched weekly magazine, The New Yorker. White and Thurber shared an office at the magazine. In 1929, the duo published their satirical book, Is Sex Necessary?, which also featured Thurber’s cartoons.
Thurber considered himself to be a writer foremost; however, in 1931, White pulled some of Thurber’s drawings from a wastebasket and submitted them to The New Yorker for publication. From that time onward, Thurber’s cartoons appeared regularly in the magazine. Thurber’s writing and his drawings contributed greatly to the magazine’s humorous tone and style. Although Thurber left the magazine in 1935, he continued to submit work there, including “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (1939), until his death.
In October 1961, Thurber suffered a blood clot in his brain. Despite a successful surgery, Thurber passed away in November of the same year at the age of 66 from complications relating to pneumonia.
