Royal W. Jimerson (b. Minneapolis ,
Minnesota , 4 September 1895; d. San Francisco , California
Royal Wade Jimerson was the oldest of two children of Herbert
W. Jimerson (1865-1964) and Harriet M. Page (1874-1972), who were married in Minneapolis on 7 November
1894. Royal had one sister, Faith, who
was six years younger than himself.
The family
moved to Wisconsin before 1910, and Royal was
educated at the University of Wisconsin in Madison .
For about five years he worked as a reporter on The Minneapolis Star and The
Minneapolis Tribune. He married
Mabel Weik (1886-1974) in Chicago
on 24 February 1917. At the time he filled out his draft registration card for
World War I, Jimerson was a newspaper reporter in Chicago . Jimerson and his wife had two
children; their oldest son Herbert was born in Minneapolis in 1917 but died of bronchial
pneumonia in 1929. Their second son,
Royal W. Jimerson, Jr., was born in 1920.
In 1925 Jimerson
joined The San Francisco Examiner as
a rewrite man, and the family moved to California . He went over to The San Francisco Chronicle in 1935 as a reporter, but later
returned to The San Francisco Examiner
as financial editor. In 1938 he was
appointed political editor, a position he held until 1954 when he retired
because of illness. He died in San Francisco at the age
of 62.
In April
1928 he published a single story in Weird
Tales magazine, “Medusa”, with a headpiece illustration by Hugh
Rankin. E.F. Bleiler has noted that it
is a modernized version of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark”, calling it
“well-written, and one of the more effective horror stories of the
period.” It was reprinted by Christine
Campbell Thomson in her anthology By
Daylight Only (1929), the fifth volume in the British “Not at Night”
anthology series. “Medusa” was also reprinted in the May 1938 issue of Weird Tales. It is Jimerson’s only known
published work of fiction.
Jimerson also had two letters in “The Eyrie”,
the letter column of Weird Tales, in the January and May 1928 issues. In the
latter letter, Jimerson wrote: “Your March issue hits a new high level. My own preference is for stories that leave
something to the imagination, and the March number hits the ball. Its literary
quality is about the best you have attain; from cover to cover, the boys have
done their job beautifully.”
NB: Thanks to Alistair Durie and Terence McVicker for assistance on this entry.
No comments:
Post a Comment