Richard Felton Outcault was born in Lancaster, Ohio in 1863. By age fifteen he was enrolled in a Cincinnati art school. His talents came to the attention of Thomas Edison, who sponsored Outcault for study in Paris in 1888. Returning to America, Outcault began to produce humorous cartoons for magazines such as Judge and Life.

He was eventually hired by Joseph Pulitzer to work on the New York World. Outcault was one of the many talented people hired away from Pulitzer by William Randolph Hearst during their newspaper wars.Outcault was also responsible for another enduring American character.

In 1902, after the popularity of the Yellow Kid had waned, Outcault was working at the New York Herald, where he created Buster Brown. Buster's talking dog Tige, visually based upon Outcault's own bulldog, had appeared some time before in an 1897 Yellow Kid strip.

Outcault eventually tired of the comic business and in 1909, along with his son, he opened Chicago's Outcault Advertising Agency.

Contributed by Michael G. Robinson, American Culture Studies, "1890s" course, Spring, 1996.

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