Frances Warfield

(1884 - 1969)

Frances Warfield contributed short humor pieces to The New Yorker in the 1920s and into the 1930s, when she began to experience hearing loss. About people whose lips it was hard to read, she wrote, “The deadpans, the mealymouths, the shybirds, I called them. The people who mumble; the people who race; the people who fidget, cover their mouths, turn their backs…The men with mustaches. I wanted to murder the men with mustaches.” After two operations, she regained her hearing in the 1940s and published the memoir Keep Listening.