George Ade

Journalist, writer, and playwright, born in Kentland, Indiana, USA. He was a Chicago journalist (1890–1900) whose collected columns, Fables in Slang (1899), became a classic of midwestern vernacular satire. He continued to publish more collections of his ‘fables’, and also wrote a dozen popular Broadway plays and musicals (1900–10). Collections of his trademark fables, such as People You Know (1903) and Hand-Made Fables (1920), are the most durable of his prolific writings. He lived in Indiana after 1904 but travelled widely.

George Ade (February 9, 1866 - May 16, 1944) was an American writer, newspaper columnist, and playwright.

Ade was born in Kentland, Indiana, one of seven children raised by John and Adaline (Bush) Ade.

In 1890 Ade joined the Chicago Morning News, which later became the Chicago Record, where McCutcheon was working. In the column, which McCutcheon illustrated, George Ade illustrated Chicago-life. Ade's well-known "fables in slang" also made their first appearance in this popular column.

Ade's literary reputation rests upon his achievements as a great humorist of American character during an important era in American history: the first large wave of migration from the countryside to burgeoning cities like Chicago, where, in fact, Ade produced his best fiction. His work constitutes a vast comedy of Midwestern manners, and therefore, by logical extension, a comedy of American manners at a significant juncture in the development of indigenous American culture.

Throughout his fiction he dealt consistently with the "little man," the commonplace, undistinguished, average American, usually a farmer or citizen in the lower middle class. it places Ade as one of the foremost humorists of American democracy.

Ade's followed in the footsteps of his idol Mark Twain by making distinctive use of the American language. In his unique "Fables in Slang," which purveyed not so much slang per se but rather the American colloquial vernacular, Ade pursued an effectively genial satire that is notable for its scrupulous objectivity. Ade's regular practice in the best fables is to present a little drama incorporating concrete, specific evidence with which he implicitly indicts the object of his satire--always a type (e.g., the social climber).

As a moralist who does not overtly moralize, who is all too aware of the ironies of what in his day was the modern world, George Ade can readily be termed our first modern American humorist. Through the values implicit in the fables, Ade manifests an ambivalence between the traditional rural virtues in which he was raised (the virtues of Horatio Alger and the McGuffey Readers) and the craftiness he saw all around him in Chicago, where the population was exploding. Ade's prevalent practice is to record, as on moving picture film, the pragmatic efforts of the little man to get along in such a world.

Ade propounds a golden mean, satirizing both hidebound adherence to obsolete standards and too-easy adjustment to new standards.

Ade was a playwright as well as an author, penning such stage works as Artie, The Sultan of Sulu(a musical comedy), The College Widow, The Fair Co-ed, and "The County Chairman".

After twelve years in Chicago, he built a home near the town of Brook, Indiana (Newton County).

George Ade is one of the American writers whose publications made him rich. When land values were inflated about the time of World War I, Ade was a millionaire. Ade is also famous among Sigma Chis as the author of The Sigma Chi Creed, one of the central documents of the fraternity's philosophies.

George Ade died in Brook, Indiana. A story of the streets and town (1896) Pink Marsh : a story of the streets and town (1897) Doc' Horne (1899) Fables in slang (1899) More fables (1900) American vacations in Europe (1901) Forty modern fables (1901) Ki-Ram (1901) Girl proposition (1902) The County Chairman (1903) Handsome Cyril, or, The messenger boy with the warm feet (1903) In Babel; an original satire in two acts (1903) Breaking into society (1904) The College Widow (1904) Sho gun, an original comic opera in two acts (1904) True bills (1904) Round about Cairo, with and without the assistance of the dragoman or Simon Legree of the Orient (1906) Slim princess (1907) Fair co-ed (1909) Old town (1909) I remember him when : a Hoosier fable dealing with the happy days of away back yonder (1910) Hoosier hand book and true guide for the returning exile (1911) Verses and jingles (1911) Just out of college;