Briggs, Clare

Clare Briggs (1875-1930) first rose to fame with his early comic strip A. Piker Clerk, but gained his national prominence with such features as, When a Feller Needs a Friend, The Days of Real Sport, and Ain't it a Grand and Glorious Feeling?.

Briggs penned sweetly drawn commentary on American life, much of which was derived from his own life, especially the boyhood cartoons. He worked with a light touch, never preaching to the audience. He was one of the most highly paid cartoonists in the country when he died of pneumonia in 1930. At his death, famed writer Franklin P. Adams penned:

"I feel acutely the loss of a cartoonist whose work I have enjoyed hugely for 30 years. I enjoyed it so much that I got him to leave Chicago so that his work could appear in the New York Tribune with mine. It helped the paper so much that Clare stayed there for 15 years, seven years longer than I did. To my notion, he drew no dud cartoons. I never knew anyone who so enjoyed working. Often while drawing a cartoon I have seen him laugh uproariously at it. He was a sweet and merry boy, if a rotten poker player, and the public, poorer for his leaving it, is a big winner in having him at all."