Margaret Fishback was born in DC, and attended public schools in the city, graduating from Cardozo High School (then called Central High) in 1917, and Goucher College in Baltimore in 1921. She taught English and History for one year following her graduation at Columbia Junior High in DC, then moved to New York. Her second New York job was in the advertising division of Macy’s Department Store, where she rose through the ranks (from 1930 to 1951) to chief copywriter, becoming one of the highest paid women in the advertising business at that time. She later worked for four other ad agencies, until her retirement in 1963.
While working, she composed popular light verse, and was compared in her time with Dorothy Parker. Her poems were published regularly in the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Collier’s Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Mademoiselle, the Saturday Evening Post, and the New Yorker. She collected them in the volumes I Feel Better Now (1932), Out of My Head (1933), I Take It Back (1935), One to a Customer: Collected Poems (1938), and Time for a Quick One (1940).
In addition, Fishback wrote a column, “Woman-Talk,” for Liberty Magazine, wrote short stories, radio plays, articles (published in Time and Life), an etiquette book, Safe Conduct: When to Behave—and Why (1938), and a parenting guide, Look Who’s a Mother! A Book about Babies for Parents, Expectant and Otherwise (1945), and books for children, including My Little Library (1963) and A Child’s Book of Natural History (1969).
Fishback married the chief rug buyer at Macy’s, Alberto Antolini, in 1935, and had one son, Anthony. As many of her poems had extolled the single life, the New York American reported on her in 1935 with an article headlined “Sneerer at Love Engaged to Wed.” She divorced her husband in 1958. Fishback died at her summer home in Camden, Maine at age 85.
This address was one of Fishback’s childhood homes.
The Homes
Margaret Fishback
1461 S Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USA
Located in U Street/Strivers Section neighborhood, Northwest- West of Rock Creek