BURNAND, SIR FRANCIS COWLEY English humorist, was born in London. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and originally studied first for the Anglican, then for the Roman Catholic Church; but eventually took to the law and was called to the bar. He had founded the Amateur Dramatic club at Cambridge and finally he abandoned the church and the law, first for the stage and subsequently for dramatic authorship. His first great dramatic success was made with the burlesque Black-Eyed Susan (1866), and he wrote a large number of other burlesques, comedies and farces. Burnand became in 1862 a regular contributor to Punch; in 188o he was appointed editor and only retired from that position in 1906. In 19o2 he was knighted. His literary reputation as a humorist depends, apart from his long association with Punch, on his well-known book Happy Thoughts, originally published in Punch in 1863-64 and frequently reprinted. See his Records and Reminiscences (1904) .