Outcault, Richard

Outcault, Richard (Felton)

(1863–1928) cartoonist; born in Lancaster, Ohio. In 1894 his cartoons depicting children in the New York City slums, titled Hogan's Alley, became a regular series for the New York World. The cartoons provoked protests from the social establishment but charmed the reading public, which nicknamed the series, "The Yellow Kid," a title that later inspired the term, "yellow journalism," to describe the sensationalistic reporting of the day. In 1902 he introduced a well-to-do but mischievous child in the cartoon series, Buster Brown, which appeared in the New York Journal each Sunday until 1920.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.