Josh Billings

Josh Billings was the pen name of Henry Wheeler Shaw (1818–1885), one of the most popular American humorists of the nineteenth century. Born in Lanesborough, Massachusetts, he left Hamilton College without a degree, roamed the West, and worked as a farmer, steamboat man and auctioneer before he began writing in his forties. His comic essays and aphorisms, written in a deliberately misspelled phonetic English, appeared in newspapers across the country, and his annual Farmer's Allminax sold in huge numbers. He was also a successful lecturer, and Mark Twain admired his gift for compressed wit.