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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