fictional characters originally appearing in the newspaper columns of
American journalist, poet and playwright,
Don Marquis (1878- 1937) in 1916. "archy" (a
reincarnated poet) is a philosophical cockroach who types letters to the author in lower
case letters (as he is unable to operate the
shift mechanism on a typewriter) and "
mehitabel," a free-spirited
alley cat, is his friend. The cockroach mocked many subjects (specifically those that irritated Marquis), such as
technology and popular
science writers and the
cat, whose
motto was toujours gai (a
French phrase meaning "always cheerful"), ridiculed things such as
pretentious social attitudes. After publication in newspapers, the works appeared in three "archy and
mehitabel" books in the
late 1920s and early 1930s.
Following Marquis'
death the "archy and
mehitabel" stories were combined into one illustrated volume, and
released as The
Life and
Times of archy and
mehitabel (1940).