People Love Firsts

Gender and Racial Firsts Among Cartoonists

Sometimes it’s quite clear when there is a first, other times it’s not. As a cartoonist who is a woman for The New Yorker, I am interested in those who came before me. We can say with some assurance that the first woman to publish a cartoon in The New Yorker was Ethel Plummer, in the first issue of the magazine in 1925. All the other cartoonists in that issue were men, or at least their signatures indicated their gender — not always something one should rely on, but that’s what I am (perhaps wrongly) doing here. Gender…