Opper was born 2 January, 1857, in Madison, Ohio. At the age of 14 he left high school and worked at the Madison Gazette as a printer's apprentice and did cartooning. His desire to be a successful national cartoonist drove him to submit his drawings to notable magazines of the period. His cartoons were often published in magazines like Scribner's, The Century, and St. Nicholas. His early successes encouraged Opper to move to the East Coast. While not yet 20, he was hired as a staff artist for Wild Oats.

Opper continued freelancing for other magazines, such as Puck and Harper's Bazaar. As a result, he did not go unnoticed by Colonel Frank Leslie, who hired him for Leslie's Magazine in the capacity of news correspondent, cartoonist, and artist. Opper held this position for three years before moving to Puck, where he was the leading political cartoonist. His cartoons for Puck firmly established him as one of the exceptional talents of the late nineteenth century. Staying with Puck until 1899, Opper was then persuaded by William Randolph Hearst to do weekly cartoons for the New York Journal's Humorist section. It was in these pages that Opper's most popular and lasting comic character - Happy Hooligan - first appeared.

Throughout his career Opper continued creating both political and topical cartoons. While he seldom did daily strip work, he often worked on as many as three separate full- and half-page weekly strips during the first two decades of the twentieth century. By 1932, his worsening eyesight forced him into semiretirement. Opper died of heart trouble at his estate in New Rochelle, N.Y., 27 or 28 August, 1937.

Sources:

Garraty, John A., and Mark C. Carnes, eds. American National Biography. Vol. 16. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Horn, Maurice, ed. The World Encyclopedia of Comics. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999.