Wallace Irwin

Wallace Irwin (March 15, 1875 – February 14, 1959) was an American writer. Over the course of his long career, Irwin wrote humorous sketches, light verse, screenplays, short stories, novels, nautical lays, aphorisms, journalism, political satire, lyrics for Broadway musicals, and the libretto for an opera. His novel The Julius Caesar Murder Case (1935) represents a subgenre within detective fiction, the mystery novel set in antiquity.

Quotes

• Far, oh, far is the Mango island,
  Far, oh, far is the tropical sea —
  Palms a-slant and the hills a-smile, and
  A cannibal maiden a-waiting for me.
  I’ve been deceived by a damsel Spanish
  And Indian maidens both red and brown,
  A black-eyed Turk and a blue-eyed Danish
  And a Puritan lassie of Salem town. ...
  But there’s truth in the heart of the maid of Mango,
  Though her cheeks is black like the kiln-baked cork,
  As she sets in the shade o’ the whingo-whango
  A-waitin’ for me — with a knife and fork.
  • "The Constant Cannibal Maid", sts. 1, 2, 6
  • Nautical Lays of a Landsman (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1904), p. 63