Marge (cartoonist)

Marjorie Henderson Buell (December 11, 1904–May 30, 1993) was an American cartoonist who worked under the pen name Marge. She was best known as the creator of Little Lulu.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Buell was 16 when her first cartoon was published. In 1925, she created her first syndicated comic strip, The Boy Friend, which ran through 1926. Marge was friends with Oz author Ruth Plumly Thompson and illustrated her fantasy novel King Kojo (1933).

Little Lulu begins

Hired by The Saturday Evening Post in 1934, her first Little Lulu drawing appeared on the back page of that weekly in 1935. Little Lulu replaced Carl Anderson's Henry, which had been picked up for distribution by King Features Syndicate. Little Lulu was created as a result of Anderson's success, as noted by Schlesinger Library curator Kathryn Allamong Jacob:

Lulu was born in 1935, when The Saturday Evening Post asked Buell to create a successor to the magazine’s Henry—Carl Anderson’s stout, mute little boy—who was moving on to national syndication. The result was Little Lulu, the resourceful, equally silent (at first) little girl whose loopy curls were reminiscent of the artist’s own as a girl. Buell explained to a reporter, “I wanted a girl because a girl could get away with more fresh stunts that in a small boy would seem boorish.”

In 1935, she married C. Addison Buell. The couple had two sons, Fred and Larry, and lived in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

The Little......
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