Edgar Wilson Nye

Edgar Wilson Nye , known as Bill Nye, 1850-96, American humorist and journalist, b. Shirley Mills, Maine. He lived in Wisconsin from 1852 to 1876, when he went to Wyoming. There he was admitted to the bar and became a judge. He founded and edited (1881-84) the Laramie Boomerang and contributed to it humorous comments and yarns of frontier life, which were collected in Bill Nye and Boomerang (1881), Forty Liars and Other Lies (1882), and Baled Hay (1884). In 1886 he moved to New York City, where he wrote for the World and gave lyceum recitals, some of them with James Whitcomb Riley. Among his later works are the comical Bill Nye's History of the United States (1894) and Bill Nye's History of England (1896) and the play The Cadi (1891).

Bibliography: See Bill Nye: His Own Life Story (comp. by his son, F. W. Nye, 1926); his letters (ed. by N. O. Rush, 1951).

Nye, Edgar Wilson (1850–96), better known as Bill Nye, was born in Maine, reared in the frontier country of Wisconsin, and removed to Wyoming Territory (1876), where he was admitted to the bar and edited the Laramie Boomerang (1881–84), a local newspaper. His humorous writings were frequently reprinted and won him international fame. In 1889 he moved east and continued to write in a similar vein for the New York World. His writings were characterized by the loud and obvious humor typical of the period, and he employed such stylistic devices as misquotation, punning, malapropisms, and understatement, all juxtaposed in magnificently deformed sentences. Under his pseudonym, he published a series of very successful books, beginning with Bill Nye and Boomerang (1881). Some of these were compiled from his brief newspaper sketches, while others have a lengthy continuity of subject, as in the comic History of the United States (1894) and History of England (1896). After 1885 his reputation was increased by his humorous lectures, in which he frequently appeared with James Whitcomb Riley.