Will Cuppy was a brilliant and popular humorist, best known for his mock-scientific observations on the natural world. A slow and painstaking writer, he produced only one volume of college stories and six books of comic essays, in addition to editing three volumes of mystery stories. His best work rivals Benchley and Thurber for its wit, and he used the persona of scientific investigator to satirize the human race, sometimes whimsically and sometimes with acerbic bitterness.

William Jacob Cuppy was born in 1884 in Auburn, Indiana, the second of three children of Thomas Jefferson and Mary Frances Cuppy; the family background was Huguenot and Pennsylvania Dutch, and his paternal grandfather was an Indiana state senator. As a child he enjoyed summers at the family farm near South Whitley, Indiana," ... where I acquired my first knowledge of the birds and the flowers and all the other aspects of animate nature...