Ethel Jacobson

Ethel Jacobson (1899 – 15 February 1991 ) was an American writer of light verse and a book reviewer.

Early life and education Born Ethel Sonntag in Paterson, New Jersey, she was "brought up in New York City". The family moved to Fullerton, California, in 1928. ) for the Chicago Tribune, to 1978, Jacobson contributed hundreds of poems to The Saturday Evening Post. Other periodicals to which she contributed material included All-Story Love Stories, Arizona Highways, The Atlantic Monthly, The Author & Journalist, Child Life, Collier's, Cosmopolitan, Fiction Parade and Golden Book Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, Life Story Magazine, Look, Liberty, Love Book Magazine, Love Story Magazine, McCall's, New Love Magazine, The New York Times, Redbook, and The Wall Street Journal.

She also wrote poems that regularly appeared within syndicated pot-pourris: "Cook-coos, by Ted Cook" and "Contract highlights, by Z. V. Smith".

Jacobson wrote many poems about her dog Rover. Later, she turned to writing poems about her cats. In 1972, she was quoted as saying "I've always been bats about cats", but described as working on a book about squirrels.

In 1937, Jacobson described herself as having a comfortable income from poetry, which she enjoyed writing, and as having refused offers of contracts to write dialogue for movies.

What has been described as Jacobson's most frequently quoted verse

(Jacobson used the term "dark verse".

Jacobson's first collection of light verse, Larks in My Hair, won high praise from its reviewer in Deseret News: "a wonderful bargain – more grins and laughs for the money than in many a more widely publicized book of humor" In his review for the Los Angeles Daily News, Richard Armour too praised this "bright little book", saying that:

Of the general school of Dorothy Parker and Margaret Fishback, this writer specializes in the battle of the sexes, household pets (she is the light verse laureate on cats and dogs) and children.

The reviewer for Deseret News of Jacobson's third collection, I'll Go Quietly, described it as "on a par with" its predecessors, but gentler: "The same wit is here, but, perhaps a little softened".

Curious Cats (1969) was the first of two books to combine photographs by Florence Harrison and text by Jacobson. It won a very favorable review in The Sun-Telegram for its "really remarkable pictures of cats-in-action, all ages" and the humor and "good 'sound' [that should make it] fun to read aloud to children". The reviewer for the Arizona Republic also enjoyed it: "it was lucky for the rest of us ailurophiles that [Harrison and Jacobson] happened to meet and decide to collaborate".

In The Cats of Sea-Cliff Castle (1972), Jacobson wrote in prose. The reviewer for The Sun-Telegram called the book "a literary and photographic work of art", in its depiction of "a haven for a colony of abandoned cats". The reviewer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram wrote that Jacobson "[provided] a poetic minimum of text for one of the most appealing picture books possible".

Books by Jacobson Larks in My Hair. Placentia, California: Courier Press, 1952. . (Poetry collection, 103 pp.; illustrated by Jacobson; with a foreword by Richard Armour) Mice in the Ink. Brea, California: Progress Press, 1955. . (Poetry collection, illustrated by Jacobson, 93 pp.) Diamonds for Your Jubilee. Santa Ana, California: Charles W. Bowers Memorial Museum and the Orange County Historical Society, 1964. . Commemorative publication, 12 pp.) I'll Go Quietly. Dallas: Triangle Press, 1966. . (Poetry collection, 71 pp.) Curious Cats. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1969. . (Poetry and prose accompanying photographs by Florence Harrison.) Who, Me? Dallas: Triangle Press, 1970. . (Poetry collection, 69 pp.) The Cats of Sea-Cliff Castle. [Los Angeles]: Ward Ritchie, 1972. . (Accompanying photographs by Florence Harrison; about the homeless cats of the area of Corona del Mar.)