Mortimer Neal Thomson

(1831 - 1875)

The American journalist and humorist Mortimer Neal Thomson joined the staff of the New York Tribune in 1855. He had been expelled from the University of Michigan for his involvement in secret societies but kept his college pseudonym, Q.K. Philander Doesticks, as his pen name. During the Civil War, Thomson served as a war correspondent; his abolitionist work was published by the American Anti-Slavery Society and translated into several languages. The 1888 anthology Mark Twain’s Library of Humor featured one of Thomson’s articles, describing him as outliving the “dashing and extravagant drolleries” that made him famous.