page_title: Purple Cow
section_title: Publication history
hierarchical_section_title: Purple Cow / Publication history
caption_attribution_description: English: A Gelett Burgess magazine cover from 1895.
context_page_description: "Purple Cow" is a short nonsense poem by American writer Gelett Burgess. It was first published in 1895.
context_section_description: The poem was first published in the first issue of Burgess's magazine The Lark in May 1895 and became his most widely known work.  
  It originally had the longer title "The Purple Cow's projected feast/Reflections on a Mythic Beast/Who's Quite Remarkable, at Least". This publication of the poem also included an illustration by Burgess featuring a cow jumping over an art nouveau fence heading towards a naked human, with both the cow and the human filled in black. A poster version of his illustration is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  The poem became popular, eventually becoming what one commentator called "[t]he most quoted poem in twentieth-century America, after 'The Night Before Christmas'". In addition to being widely anthologized, it was often transmitted orally without credit to Burgess. Many years after its appearance, publicist Jim Moran appeared at Burgess' home with a cow he had painted purple. 
  Burgess came to resent its popularity. A few years after writing the poem, Burgess wrote another short poem in response, titled "Confession: and a Portrait Too, Upon a Background that I Rue", which appeared in the final issue of The Lark in April 1897:
  Ah, yes, I wrote the "Purple Cow"—
  
  I'm Sorry, now, I wrote it;
  
  But I can tell you Anyhow
  
  I'll Kill you if you Quote it!
caption: The May 1895 issue of The Lark in which Burgess's "Purple Cow" first appeared
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