First Lady of Laughs

Classics Illustrated were comic book adaptations from classic literature, a series that Russian-born Albert Lewis Kanter (1897-1973) began in 1941 for Elliot Publishing. Introduced under the heading Classic Comics, the series started October, 1941, with a 64-page adaptation of Alexandre Dumas‘ , followed by and . With the fourth issue, The Last of the Mohicans, Kanter began his own Gilberton Publications. The first 12 issues had 64 pages, but wartime paper shortages forced Kanter to reduce each issue to 56 pages. In 1947, after the first 34 issues, Kanter changed the title from Classic Comics to Classics Illustrated, a logo with a high visibility over the next 15 years because Kanter, unlike other comic book publishers, kept his titles in print, going back to press with occasional reprintings. --

At the end of an overlong day laden with teaching and other duties, Edward Elgar lit a cigar, sat at his piano and began idling over the keys. To amuse his wife, the composer began to improvise a tune and played it several times, turning each reprise into a caricature of the way one of their friends might have played it or of their personal characteristics. "I believe that you are doing something which has never been done before," exclaimed Mrs. Elgar. Thus was born one of music's great works of original conception, and Elgar's greatest large-scale "hit": the Enigma Variations. The enigma is twofold: each of the 14 variations refers to a friend of Elgar's, who is depicted by the nature of the music, or by sonic imitation of laughs, vocal inflections, or quirks, or by more abstract allusions.