Margaret Fishback

Margaret Fishback was born in Washington, DC, and she earned an BA from Goucher College. She taught English and History for a year before turning to advertising. Fishback worked for Macy’s throughout the Depression, and in 1932 was described by a New York magazine as “the highest-paid advertising woman in the world.”

Fishback’s own poetry was mainly light verse; her poems generally offered wry takes on domesticity, marriage, and motherhood, and the life of working women in the city. She published her verse in magazines and authored several volumes of light verse, a book of etiquette, and children’s stories. Her books include: I Feel Better Now, Verses (1932), One to a Customer: Collected Poems (1937), Safe Conduct: When to Behave—And Why (1938), Look Who’s a Mother! (1945), Poems Made Up to Take Out (1963), and A Child’s Book of Natural History (1969). She died in Camden, Maine.