Dorothy Parker's Still Got It — elle.com

Dorothy Parker is best known for the work she did and the life she lived in the early 1920s. She was a pithy, fashionable young wit at the Algonquin Round Table who wrote caustic light verse and darkly funny short stories. Her later life was more complicated. Parker went through career highs and lows and always battled alcoholism. Marion Meade, Parker’s biographer, has written a short book about Parker’s final decades called The Last Days of Dorothy Parker. Much of the book focuses on Parker’s contentious friendship with fellow writer Lillian Hellman. “Dottie” and “Lilly” were a “a perfectly matched pair, a kind of intellectual vaudeville team,” Lilly’s protégé said. In the below excerpt, Meade describes their relationship in the 40s and their feelings about feminism. –Jessica Grose

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