R. F. Outcault's the Yellow Kid

the long version

Who is the Yellow Kid? He's the mischievous street urchin who took New York and the whole country by storm at the end of the nineteenth century. He's the popular comic character who was the prize in a battle between the greatest newspaper titans of the Gilded Age, Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal. He danced across the vaudeville stage, and his smiling face and yellow nightshirt appeared on thousands of books, toys, magazines, cookie tins, bars of soap, and myriad other products in Victorian homes. He was the star of the first comic strip, and he's back to celebrate his centennial with a commemorative stamp from the U.S. Postal Service and this volume, which reprints the entire comic strip for the first time since its original appearance in 1895-1898.