Lesser-Known Writers

Charles Layng

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Charles Layng (b. Cincinnati,Ohio, 10 February 1895; d. Winter Park, Florida,19 March 1970)

Charles Louis Layng appears in the 1900, 1910, and 1920 U.S.Censuses with his surname given as “Lang”. In all three instances he is listedas living with his aunt and uncle, Louis and Martha Flugel, with his parentagegiven as Irish (matching that of his aunt Martha Flugel). His service record for World War I, whichgives his last name as Layng, also notes that his was given an honorabledischarge on 28 February 1918, with a Surgeon’s Certificate of Disability,judging him as one-hundred percent disabled. By the time of the 1920 Census, hewas working as a stenographer for a railroad company. Soon after this hemarried Margaret Burgoyne (1893-1972), who was also from Cincinnati,and the couple moved to Chicago.

Layng worked as a cub reporter on the Chicago Daily News for a few years before taking on a much higherpaying job as the editor of a prosperous trade journal. His first two books appeared from a Chicago publisher at thebeginning of the craze for crossword puzzle books, Layng’s Junior Cross-Word Puzzles: First Junior Book (1924) and Layng’s Cross-Word Puzzles: Second Book(1925). He and his wife regularlytraveled to Europe, and for much of the 1930she contributed to various magazines, including pulps like Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories, Blue Book, Top-Notch, andRailroad Stories, as well as slickslike Redbook. His third book The Monarch Who Wouldn’t Go Mad (1934),a biography of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria (1830-1916), appeared fromanother Chicago publisher, Reilly & Lee, after which time his luck withpublishers seems to have run out.

During the late 1930s and 1940s, Layng worked as a foreigncorrespondent. While reporting from Munich and Vienna,Layng began a mystery novel, Murder inMunich, which was bought by Doubleday after they saw the first sixchapters. Layng sent them the rest, andheard nothing further. Returning afterthe war, he discovered that the man who had bought it had left the firm, andthat other editors had decided it was not salable in the U.S. becauseAmericans wouldn’t buy whodunits set in foreign lands.

After WW II he become involved with the Baker StreetIrregulars, a society devoted to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. After submitting an essay to the Baker Street Journal, edited by Edgar W.Smith, Layng was encouraged to write a book of such essays, examining manyanomalies in the Sherlock Holmes canon. Smith said he knew a publisher whowould be interested in such a book. Butwhen, some years later, Layng had finished the book, Layng learned that Smithhad died, so the project languished. In 1964 Layng sent a copy of thetypescript, titled The Game Is Afoot!,to Peter Ruber, who was then corresponding with Layng about his friendship withthe Chicagobookman Vincent Starrett, about whom Ruber was writing a biography. Threedecades later Ruber found the typescript in his files, and it was published in1995 by George Vanderburgh under the imprint of the Metropolitan TorontoReference Library.

In the early 1960s Layng and his wife settled in Winter Park, Florida,where Layng died in 1970.

Ronald S. L. Harding

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Ronald S. L. Harding (b. Beckenham, Kent,19 March 1905; d. Sydenham, Lewisham, 28January 1960)

Ronald S.L. Harding was the author of some ten ephemeral lowbrowthrillers, which were published primarily for the popular fiction vendors and the lending library market beginningin the mid 1930s, and which are more renowned today for their scarcity than forany literary qualities. At birth hisname was apparently registered as Vivian Stanley Lowne Harding, but by the timeof his baptism some six weeks later, his full name was recorded as RonaldStanley Lowne Harding. He was the son ofStanley James Harding (b. 1878), a technical journalist, and Emily BlanchJenoyz Lowne (b. 1870), the daughter of Robert Mann Lowne (c. 1845-1929), aninventor and manufacturer of scientific instruments. Ronald had a sister Catherine Blanche Harding,three years younger than himself.

Little is known of his life, but his family seems to havebeen active in scientific and artistic circles, particularly with regard tomusic. His first book was The Demon of Hong Kong (London: F.M.Mowl, 1934), followed by “One DreadfulNight—”: A Tale of the Unknown (London: Modern Publishing Company,[1935]). His next four books werepublished by Fiction House of London, as part of their numbered Piccadilly Novelsseries: The Murder Maniac (no. 36, c. 1935); The Black Bottle (no. 56, c. 1935); Strange Fate (no. 71, 1937); and Castle of Fear (no. 91, 1938). The Murder Maniac is arationalized supernatural horror story concerning a mad Egyptian’s attempts tomummify archeologists and to sacrifice the heroine in a pyre of engine oil inan English country house.

His seventh novel was TheLibrary of Death: A Tale of Mystery (London: Modern Publishing Company,[1938]), a dreary and forgettable work. Over half of the book is mere romance,as John Tarren, secretary to the lecherous Sir Charles Dorsay, is in love withDorsay’s step-daughter and ward, Elsie Mervyn. After their affair is discovered, much to the wrath of Sir Charles, whowants to marry Elsie himself, there is a quarrel after which Sir Charles isfound murdered, his face obliterated by a shotgun. A dithering inspector rounds up andinterviews possible suspects, in the meantime learning of a supposed familycurse whereby for the last several generations the male Dorsays have had stakesdriven through their hearts shortly after death, in order to prevent them fromrising as vampires. In the end SirCharles is discovered to have faked his own death, and he was planning todisappear to avoid bankruptcy after having squandered his family fortune. Someof the scenes are played for melodrama and thrills, but the characters are one-dimensionaland clichéd, and their actions contrived and implausible.

In an entry in a writers’ directory, Harding listed amonghis output three further novels, published by Phoenix Press, but he gave nodates for them and they are not listed in TheBritish Museum Catalogue of Printed Books. Their titles are The Blue Light;The Grimpton Bride; and Dream of Love. No copies are known to exist in libraries.

Harding also noted that he was a contributor to The Stage, and to the British Engineers Export Journal, and thathe was the librettist and composer of a five-act grand opera Frankenstein, based on Mary Shelley’sstory. The original manuscript, dating from the 1920s, was lost when his homewas damaged by a bomb during the Blitz, but he re-composed it over a five yearperiod and saw it performed once by his friends.

Harding married Dilys Hughes (1901-1985) in Dolgelly,Merionethshire, in the spring of 1927. Hardingdied in Sydenham; his widow outlived him by twenty-five years, and died in north Wales.

N.B.: I am grateful to Andrew Perry for sharing with meinformation on Harding, including the notes on the plot and the cover scan of The Murder Maniac.

Swinburne Hale

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Swinburne Hale(b. Ithaca, New York,5 April 1884; d. Westport, Connecticut, 3 July 1937)

Swinburne Hale was the oldest of four children of WilliamGardner Hale (1849-1928), Harvard-educated professor of Latin at CornellUniversity (from 1880-1892) and afterwards (until retirement in 1920) at the newlyfounded University of Chicago, where he also served as head of the Latindepartment, and Harriet Swinburne Hale (1853-1928), a graduate of VassarCollege. Swinburne’s siblings included Virginia Swinburne Hale (1887-1981), [Elizabeth] Margaret Hale(1891-1962) and Gardner Hale (1894-1931). Virginia and Gardner became artists,and Gardner’swife Dorothy (1905-1938) became famous posthumously as the subject of FridaKahlo’s painting “The Suicide of Dorothy Hale” (1939).

Swinburnewas educated at Philips Exeter Academy,and Harvard University, where he received his A.B.in 1905 and afterwards studied law. In the early years of law practice in New York, he lived in Greenwich Village, where he made many friends among writers, while he alsobecame prominent in various liberal groups. In 1921, his partner Walter Nellisat the New Yorkfirm Hale, Nellis & Shorr, described Swinburne as “not a Socialist butinterested in Socialism”.

In 1910 hemarried Beatrice Forbes-Robertson, an actress and niece of Sir JohnstoneForbes-Robertson. They had three daughters. During World War I he served in France in theMilitary Intelligence Division. He wasdivorced from his first wife in 1920, and in the following year he married Mrs.Marie Tudor Garland Green. By 1924 he was enmeshed in an affair with anotherwoman, Greta Hercz (1899-1989), but his second wife was unwilling at that time togive him a divorce.

SwinburneHale published his only book in the summer of 1923: The Demon’s Notebook—Verse and Perverse (New York: Nicholas L. Brown, 1923). The book sports a marvelous frontispiece byRose O’Neill (1874-1944), who is remembered today for work of an entirelydifferent kind: as the creator of kewpie dolls, a singular example of Americankitsch. Hale’s book is divided into twoparts, one labeled “Verse” (containing twenty-four poems), the other “Perverse”(containing thirteen poems). Hispublisher, Nicholas L. Brown, had begun as a bookseller in Philadelphiabefore moving to New Yorkin late 1918. Between 1916 and 1932,Brown published thirty-some books of poetry and belles-lettres, often classicalin nature, some of which bordered on what was considered erotic for the time,but which seemed always just on the safe side to avoid any prosecution forobscenity.

The Demon’s Notebook was reviewedfavorably by Henry Longan Stuart in TheNew York Times. Stuart wrote: “At hisbest and most serious, Mr. Hale is astonishingly good” (July 8, 1923). What Stuart doesn’t say is that for much ofthe volume, Hale is not very serious at all. The result is an unsatisfying book, which will be remembered byposterity more for the frontispiece than for any of the poems inside. To give a few examples, the first poem in thebook, “The Demon”, begins: “Let theDemon work in you! / Do not cast him out! / He knows better than you do / Whathe is about!”. In the final poem in the“Verse” section, “Dedication” (To Rose O’Neill), Hale writes:

But you, the Master-Mistress of my mind,
     Whose Demon sitshigh-throned above my stars—
But you, whose passionate pinions know no kind,
     Whose scars areburnt with scars—
You will divine my song in your far place,
    And call it withyour wings, and hold it high;
And underneath the dark of that embrace
     Young songs shallcry.

In the “Perverse” section, Hale writes in the poem “The Godin the House”:

God is moving round my house
Setting things torights.
I hear his step upon the stair,
But like a savant in my lair
Crouch and nurse my fine despair. . . .

He wants to make of this my house
A sanitary sight.
He thinks it has a curious smell—
But I should do so very well
If I could keep my funny hell.

Hale spentthe summer of 1924 in Taos, New Mexico, where his sisterMargaret lived with the writer Joseph O’Kane Foster (1898-1985), whom she wouldmarry in 1927. There he hobnobbed with D.H. Lawrence, and flirted with FreidaLawrence, while continuing his affair Greta Hercz, all the time complainingthat he felt he was going insane. In1972, Joseph Foster published an account of this time in an appallingly poormonograph, D.H. Lawrence in Taos. Inthis book Foster pretends to give accounts of the inner thoughts of the peopleinvolved, but instead he makes them all appear as vacuous and simple-minded.

SwinburneHale soon left Taosand went back east, and his worries about his own mental state came true. In 1925 he was committed to an asylum, theWestport Sanitorium, in Westport, Connecticut, and there heremained until his death in 1937 at the age of 53. Whether he ever divorced hissecond wife or not is unknown, but Greta Hercz claimed to be Mrs. Swinburne Haleand went by the name of Greta Hale until her own death many years later.

Marion Fox

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Marion Fox (b.Aldershot, Hampshire, 21 August 1885; d. reg. Richmondupon Thames, Oct.-Dec. 1973)

Between 1910 and 1928, Marion Fox published eight books,comprising seven novels and one collection of poetry. After 1928 she virtually disappeared from theliterary record. Though her novels werefairly well-reviewed upon publication, they are all very rare today, and it isonly with the 2006 reprint of Ape’s Facethat any of her work has become readily available for re-assessment.

Marion InezDouglas Fox came from a distinguished family. Her parents were the army officerMalcolm Fox (1843-1918) and his second wife, Marion Jane Mills (1863-1957).Malcolm Fox’s first wife had died in childbirth in July 1882 after less thanone year of marriage. He married againon 23 July 1884, this time to a young heiress from Tolmers, Hertford. Theironly child, named Marionafter her mother, was born the following year.

Malcolm Foxhad been educated at Rossall School and Brighton College before joiningthe army. He served with the 100th RoyalCanadians from 1863-1875, becoming Lieutenant in 1865 and Captain in 1871. Forsome time he served in Malta.He had always been especially interested in physical conditioning, sports, andboxing, and he organized many competitions for the whole garrison. Later he transferred to the 42nd RoyalHighlanders (Black Watch) and was sent to Egypt, where in 1882 he wasseverely wounded at Tell al-Kebir. (Hewas given the medal and clasp, Khedive’s star.) While in England on sick leave in 1883 he was appointedAssistant Inspector of the Army Gymnasia at Aldershot.He was soon promoted to Major, and, in 1888, to Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1889 he was appointed Inspector of theGymnasia, and (with the aid of his wife’s money) he expanded the army athleticgrounds and Gymnasia in 1894. As he hadpreviously done in Malta,he organized many competitions. Heretired in 1900 as a Colonel, but ended his career, from 1903-1910, asInspector of Physical Training to the Board of Education. In 1908 he designedthe pattern sword, used by the British cavalry in the First World War. He wasknighted in 1910, and died in 1918, after a series of strokes.

Hisdaughter Marion grew up in this military environment. She published her firstbook in early 1910, The Seven Nights: AJourney. It is a historical novel,and it concerns the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381, during the reign of RichardII. The publication was likelysubsidized by her family, for the publisher Elliot Stock was known for suchbusiness practices. But it also seems to have brought her work to the attentionof the publisher John Lane(1854-1925), whose firm distributed Elliot Stock’s titles to the booktrade. Fox’s second novel, The Hand of the North, though dated1911, was published by John Lanein October 1910. It is another historical novel, set in early 1601, concerningQueen Elizabeth and her last favorite, the Earl of Essex, who attempted to leadan uprising against the queen, an act for which he was beheaded. Fox’s thirdbook, a small collection of poems entitled TheLost Vocation, was published simultaneously in hardcover and paperback byDavid Nutt in January 1912 (though the book is dated 1911). Many of the twenty poems have supernaturalcontent, a hint, perhaps, of things to come.

Fox’s fiveremaining novels were all published by John Lane. She probably made little ifany money off them, for Lane was hesitant when it came to paying his authors.And it seems likely that Fox wrote her novels with little thought of financialreward—similarly, she is not known to have pursued money by writing forperiodicals. Her next book was TheBountiful Hour, published in September 1912. It is yet another historicalromance, set this time in the eighteenth century, giving a personal narrativeof a young girl from the age of six until her marriage.

In July1914, Marion Fox married Stephen Burman Ward (c.1887-1964). Fox’s fourth novel,Ape’s Face, followed her marriage bya few months, appearing in September. With this novel Fox moved decisively intothe supernatural, and here her particularly special theme of the intrusiveeffect of the past upon the present comes to the fore. Set in the lonely country of the Wiltshiredowns, a well-known writer and antiquary has come to the Delane-Mortonhousehold to examine some ancestral documents. The writer finds a hauntingPresence over the downs that seeks to bring about a periodic reenactment of acenturies-old curse. The novel is not entirely successful, but it hasconsiderable merit. Fox’s characterscome to life only reluctantly, while her descriptions of the natural formationsof the region, and the menacing Presence embodied therein, create a kind ofhaunted landscape that is in itself the most powerful character of the book.

Fox’s nextnovel, The Mystery Keepers, appearedin early 1919, though it was apparently written in 1910 (for the dedication isso dated). Like Ape’s Face it dealswith the periodic reenactment of a curse, here the curse having been placed ona family by a long dead abbess so that every direct male heir will diepunctually on his twenty-first birthday. The main character is a psychicdetective, and there are some effective descriptions of poltergeist activity inthe Abbey. The Saturday Review for 3May 1919 said of the book: “We have nothing but praise for the generalconception and execution of this book. It is full of sensitive writing and delicate description; its bores arelife-like—too much so indeed. It fallslittle short of being a masterpiece.”

The Luck of the Town, publishedin May 1922, provides another example of Fox’s obsession with the intrusion ofthe past upon the present. This storytells of a newly founded university in an industrial town that is built uponthe site of a Roman encampment. Throughthe unearthing of a skeleton and an inscribed tablet, a haunting influence fromthe past is revived, affecting the faculty and staff of the university.

Fox’s finalbook, Aunt Isabel’s Lover, waspublished in January 1928. The TimesLiterary Supplement of 9 February 1928 described the book as follows: “The crisis of the story is when DionArnicott does not turn up at the church to be wedded to Aunt Isabel. That andhis queer behaviour when he called on Mrs. Flemington are about the only concretethings about Dion Arnicott. His valet was most of his substance. For the resthe was spirit—with a not unconnected body dying in Italy. But nothing is known untilthe valet dies in a weird struggle in Aunt Isabel’s house, and tells a longstory . . . It does decidedly touch theimagination, as well as please the romantic sense. It is a slighter book than Miss Fox’sprevious ones—Ape’s Face and The Mystery Keepers, etc.—but notunworthy of them.”

For while,in the 1930s, Fox resided in Paris. In the mid-1950s she was working on a biographyof Jean Ingelow, but it was never published. Marion Fox died at the age of 88in Richmond upon Thamesin late 1973.

Fox and herhusband had two children, a daughter Persephone Marion Ward (1916-2011) and ason Stephen George Peregrine Ward (1917-2008). The daughter, as “Marion Ward”, published two books, The Du Barry Inheritance (1967), abiography of Jeanne Bécu, Comtesse Du Barry (1743-1793), a mistress of Louis XVof France; and Forth (1982), a life of Nathaniel Parker Forth (1744-1809), a British diplomat in France.Marion Ward was on the staff of The Historical Manuscripts Commission (which in2003 merged with the Public Record Office to form The National Archives). Writing as “S.G.P. Ward”, the son’s booksinclude Wellington’s Headquarters: A Study of theAdministrative Problems in the Peninsula, 1809-1914 (1957); Wellington (1963); and Faithful: the Story of the Durham Light Infantry(1963). More recently he wrote the entry on his maternal grandfather for The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(2004).

Among Fox’sother relatives, there were a few more writers. In 1888 her mother’s sister, Florence Sophia Mills (1865-1932), hadmarried Reginald Cholmondeley (1857-1941), a brother of novelist MaryCholmondeley (1859-1925). Fox’s novel The Mystery Keepers is dedicated “ToUncle Regie and Aunt Florie.” Reginaldand Mary’s younger sister Caroline Essex Cholmondeley (1861-1934) was themother of the novelist and travel writer Stella Benson (1892-1933).

NB: Anearlier version of this entry appeared in my column “Notes on Lost andForgotten Writers”, All Hallows no.43 (Summer 2007).

Alan Miller

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Alan Miller (fl.1920s-1940s)

Nothing biographical is known of Alan Miller.* According to the British Museum Catalogue, he authored four books, the first being asmall volume of poetry called RandomRhymes (Birkenhead: Wilmer Brothers & Co., 1920). This was followed over a decade later by hisfirst novel, The King of Men (London:Nash & Grayson, 1931), which is a curious mix of everyday romance with anM.P. Shiel-like plot about a scientist who unleashes upon the world a diseasethat takes away all natural desires, thereby threatening the end ofhumankind. The scientist who inventedthe disease is found dead, but his assistant eventually (though reluctantly)works out the cure. The title of thebook refers to Time. The Times Literary Supplement of 14 May 1931noted that “the main idea, the disease, is a good one, but it is wasted in thisrather shapeless, superficial book.”

Miller’snext, The Phantoms of a Physician(London: Grayson & Grayson, 1934), is an episodic novel narrating fifteenstories of personal experience by Dr. J. W. Vivian, a doctor who finds himselffrequently in communication with the dead, and investigates supernaturaloccurrences. These experiences graduallygrow more harrowing, and lead up to a final terrifying ordeal in which Viviannearly loses his life as well as his reason. The Times Literary Supplement of 6 September 1934 summed up the book asfollows: “Although none of the incidentsdescribed is strikingly original, the series as a whole is very effective, andwill appeal to all with a liking for the occult or the macabre.”

Miller’sfinal book was Close of Play (London:St. Hugh’s Press, 1949), which is basically a short story printed with widespacing and illustrations (done by Bip Pares) to make it into a smallbook. It is a sentimental fantasy aboutcricket, in which the elderly Reverend Septimus Jones is called upon to playfor his country in an important Test match, fulfilling a lifelong dream. Of course Jones has died, but whether theevents of the story are a dream fantasy while Jones is dying, or an afterlifefantasy, is left ambiguous. R. C.Robertson-Glasgow contributed a short appreciative foreword, noting that “eventhose who have never crossed a street or lane to watch a cricket-match willsurely recognize that Close of Playis in its kind a masterpiece.”

Not listedin the British Museum Catalogue isanother poetry collection, Mixed Grill (Birkenhead: Willmer Brothers & Co., 1932); this seemscertainly to have been by the same Alan Miller.

*I’d be grateful to hear from anyone who can tell meanything about this Alan Miller.

NB: An earlier version of this entry appeared in my column“Notes on Neglected Fantasists”, Fastitocalonno. 1 (2010).

Dora Owen

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Dora Owen(b. Anwick, Lincolnshire,Dec. 1865; d. Wakefield,19 July 1938)

Rose Dora Ashington was the youngest child of the ReverendHenry Ashington (1803-1875) and Frances Denton Ashington, née Osborne(1826-1915). She had five older sistersand three older brothers. Her father was an alumnus of TrinityCollege, Cambridge(B.A. Classical Tripos, 1826; M.A. 1829), and was ordained a deacon in London in 1831. He becamea priest the following year, and served at various places in Lincolnshire, including as rector of Quarrington(1844), rector of Kirby-le-Thorp with Asgarsby (1845-1854), and rector ofBrauncewell and vicar of Anwick (1854-1874). Henry Ashington published a fewsmall books, including The EnglishClergyman: His Commission, Conduct, and Doctrine (1846), and Two Sermons (1848), with one sermon byAshington and the other by C.E. Kennaway.

Little isknown of Dora’s upbringing and education. In 1881 she was living with herwidowed mother, and several unmarried siblings, in Ecclesall Bierlow, Yorkshire. In thesummer of 1887, in Ormskirk, Lancashire, she married Edward Charles EverardOwen (1860-1949), a Balliol College, Oxford,graduate (B.A. Classical Moderations and Literae Humaniores, 1883; M.A. 1886).He had been elected to a Fellowship at New College, Oxford, in1884, and was a lecturer in classics for two years before being appointed tothe teaching staff at Harrow, where he wouldremain for twenty-four years. He was alsoordained in 1884, and when he gave up teaching, he served as rector at Bucknellfor two years, and subsequently at other places. As “E.C.E. Owen” or “E.C. Everard Owen”, hepublished several books, including LatinSyntax for the Use of Upper Forms (1888), A Synopsis of the Chief Events of Ancient History (1898), and A Brief History of Greece and Rome(1913). He also translated Some AuthenticActs of the Early Martyrs (1927), and edited some volumes of poetry,including Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage(1897) by Lord Byron, Selections from thePoems of Alfred Lord Tennyson (1899), TheOdyssey of Homer (1901), and Selectionsfrom the Poems of H. W. Longfellow (1911). Finally, he published one slim booklet of hisown poetry, Three Hills and Other Poems(1916). He and Dora Owen had six sons and two daughters. These Owens were apparently unrelated to thepoet Wilfred Owen, as has sometimes mistakenly been reported.

Dora Owenshared with her husband a great interest in poetry, and her only book was ananthology, The Book of Fairy Poetry (London:Longmans, Green and Co., 1920), to which she contributed one poem (itbegins: “Children, children, don’tforget / There are elves and fairies yet.”). It is a lavish volume (priced at21 shillings on publication in October 1920), with sixteen colored plates by Britishartist Warwick Goble (1862-1943), pasted onto inserted heavy pasteboard pages,as well as fifteen further black-and-white drawings. Goble’s works arewell-collected today, and he is perhaps best remembered for watercolorillustrations to gift books, particularly to Green Willow and Other Japanese Fairy Tales (1910).

The Book of Fairy Poetry is divided intothree main sections: Fairy Stories; Fairy Songs, Dances and Talk; and Fairylandand Fairy Lore; with the poems in each section presented in chronological order. In addition to traditional ballads andstories in verse, there are selections from many classic authors of fairyliterature, including Michael Drayton, William Shakespeare, John Milton, AndrewMarvell, Sir Walter Scott, and John Keats, as well as work by more recent poetssuch as Christina Rossetti, Andrew Lang, Alfred Tennyson, Robert LouisStevenson, Fiona Macleod, Walter de la Mare, William Butler Yeats, and J.R.R.Tolkien. Tolkien’s poem “Goblin Feet”,the third poem from the end, earned a colored illustration by Warwick Goble,representing the line from Tolkien’s poem: “And the padding feet of many gnomesa-coming!”

Dora Owencompiled the book over several years. Itwas in January 1916, just one month after the first publication of “Goblin Feet”in Oxford Poetry 1915, that she wroteto ask for Tolkien’s permission to include it in her book. Tolkien responded by offering her someadditional poems, which she declined to use. “Goblin Feet” was Tolkien’s first significant publication, and thereprint in The Book of Fairy Poetryone of his most lavish. In later yearsTolkien came to feel that “Goblin Feet” represented much of what he had come todislike about modern conceptions of fairies, and complained that the poem wasgiven an illustration “as bad as it deserved”. Certainly one cannot fault Goble too much for the illustration, which isof a type consistent with the rest in the volume, and which includes specificdetails (with some absurdities added, particularly in the facial expressions ofthe gnomes) from Tolkien’s poem.

Vivian Meik

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Vivian Meik (b.at sea, registered at Calcutta, 21 July 1894; d.San Clemente, California, 22 December 1955)

Vivian Bernard Meik was the son of Lorenzo Meik (1847-1918),a maritime inspector based in India,and his wife Alice Gertrude Thomas (1856-1918). Meik’s family were originallyfrom Scotland, but hisfather and grandfather had mostly lived in India. He was the oldest survivingchild of five (an older brother and an older sister had died in infancy); he hadtwo younger brothers.

Details ofhis early life are sketchy, and by his own account (which often seemsexaggerated) he claimed to have circled the globe three times before he waseighteen. In 1913 he was working on arice plantation in Borneo, and after the outbreak of war he was commissioned inCalcutta and served with the British Sixth Division, being wounded a number oftimes. He claimed to have earned the Croix de Guerre for acts of bravery. InCalcutta, on 14 October 1916, he married a woman named Bernadette Marie(1898-1981), whose original surname was possibly Desperadza (after her divorcefrom Meik, probably in the late 1920s, she used the surname Cooke, beforechanging it officially in 1946 to D’Esperance; it became Nightingale after her1961 marriage to Peter Nightingale). They had two children, a son Colvin Bernard Peter Meik (1917-1996) anddaughter Valerie (1924-2003).

Afterdemobilization in 1919, Meik joined the staff of the Bengali-Nagpur Railway,based out of Calcutta,as an assistant traffic superintendent. For this (and other) railway-associatedwork, he traveled extensively, and was eventually transferred to Central Africa. In 1928, bothered by war wounds, Meikleft the tropics and soon settled in London,where he took up writing. Probably in the late 1920s he was also divorced fromhis first wife, and married Elsie May Howard (1903-1997), known familiarly as“Eve”.

His firstbook was a type of sensational nonfiction, ThePeople of the Leaves (1931), in which Meik claimed to have discovered arace of primitive aborigines in a little-known section of

India

. It was fairly successful,and also had an American edition, published by Henry Holt. Zambezi Interlude (1932) is a kind of follow-up, covering Meik’s experiencesin central Africa. Lacking the narrative hookof the first volume, it is more personal and, perhaps as a consequence, moreinteresting, but it did not sell nearly as well.

With Devils’ Drums (London: Philip Allan,1933), Meik turned to fiction. A collection of ten short stories with recurringcharacters, most of the tales concern central African voodoo, witch doctors,and curses. These stories are well-executed and are a refreshing change fromthe typical British horror stories of the 1930s. One story, “The Doll of Death”, was filmed in1973 as an episode of Rod Serling’s NightGallery. Devils’ Drums was published as part of the famous “Creeps” series,edited by Charles L. Birkin. Meikcontributed one related story to one of the “Creep” anthologies, Monsters (1934).

A follow-upnovel, focusing on new figures but with brief appearances by some of thecharacters from Devils’ Drums, was The Veils of Fear (London: Philip Allan,1934). In it a small group travels tothe Near East, to the Himalayas, and on to Hong Kongin order to challenge two figures of supernatural evil. As a novel it isunsuccessful, with long dream sequences that backtrack the plot, and a terribleending in which one of the major point-of-view characters realizes in the finalline that he is dead.

Philip Allan edition

Hillman-Curl editoin

Meik’s nextnovel, The Curse of Shiva(London: Philip Allan, 1936; NewYork: Hillman-Curl, 1938), was also hislast, but it shows considerable improvement in pacing, and in the narrativehandling of a long story. It is anon-fantasy thriller based on the enactment of a centuries-old Indian curse inmodern London. The Saturday Review described the book as a "blood and thunder yarn of slinking Eurasians, renegade whites, stranglings, etc., with reasonably good detective trimmings" (23 July 1938).

In late1935, Meik turned to journalism, and this seems to have put an end to hisfiction writing. Owing to his expertisein Africa, he was hired to cover the SecondItalo-Abyssinian War. Around the start of WW II, Meik joined the staff of The People, a weekly, then the largestcirculation English language newspaper in the world. He also worked for other similar weeklies,like The Illustrated and John Bull. He was in London during the Blitz, and lost his lefteye during the intense bombing.

His finalbook was the small polemic, Nemesis overHitler (1941), which is a sensationalist attack on Hitler, claiming tocover supposed inside meetings of Hitler’s inner circle in Berlin. Towards the end of the war, Meikbegan to investigate Mormonism, and he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-DaySaints in April 1946. The followingyear, he moved with his family to Salt Lake City, where the Church has its headquarters, andwhere his uncle resided. Meik joined the staff of the church-owned Deseret News, where he was given acolumn entitled “Interpreting the News”.

Medusa Press edition

In 1953 Meikmoved with his family to San Clemente, California. In early 1955, owingto ill health, he gave up his column. He suffered a fatal heart attack whiledriving his car during the afternoon of 22 December 1955.

Vivian Meikpublished six books: two novels, one short story collection, and three works ofnonfiction. His best work is to be found in his short stories. A long-overdue expanded edition of Devil’s Drums, adding two stray talesand an excerpt from Zambezi Interlude, appeared in 2011 from Medusa Press. This edition is limited to 300 copies. For ordering information, see the Medusa Press website HERE.

NB: This entry updates and is based on part of my more detailed “Introduction” to the 2011 expanded edition of Devils’ Drums, published by Medusa Press.

Stratford D. Jolly

2012-01-04T08:29:00.000-08:00

Stratford D. Jolly(b. Scotland, 7 September1881; d. Mombasa, Kenya, 2 March 1948)

Stratford Dowker Aird Jolly was the only child of BenjaminStratford Robert Jolly (1856-1915) and Beatrice Jolly, née Williamson(1853-1911), who were married in 1880. He was educated at the GlengarthBoys Schoolin Cheltenham, and at the Westminster School in central London. In autumn 1908 he married Maud Lyndon Bateman (c.1868-1940), and servedin the Royal Air Force in Francefrom September 1917 through January 1919. The Soul of the Moor: A Romance of the Occult (London: William Rider & Son, [1911]) was hisfirst book and only novel. His two other books include The Treasure Trail (1934), which recounts Jolly’s treasure huntingin Central and South America, and South American Adventures (1938), whichis a condensation of the earlier book. After he returned to England,Jolly married a second time in the spring of 1933, settling around Liverpool, where with his second wife Eileen MargaretStead (1901-1984) he raised two children. He died at the EuropeanHospital in Mombasa, Kenya,at the age of 66.

The Soul of the Moor, issued by theearly twentieth-century’s foremost British publisher of books on esotericphilosophy, mysticism, psychical research, and the occult, is unfortunately nota very good as a specimen of occult romance. The recently wed narrator (whose name is belatedly revealed to be HarveyLangford) is devoted to his wife Lucy, who is oddly afflicted by a debilitatingweakness. Langford uses occult hypnotism to put his wife in a deep sleep and toimpart to her his vitality. In this deepsleep Lucy’s more knowledgeable soul is able to explain to as well as assisther husband in his various endeavors on her behalf, for she is much higher thanher husband on the spiritual ladder of knowledge that everyone must climb. Lucy is haunted by a Moor, who according toLucy is her “other self” who worships her. There follows various adventures and abductions and chases, after whichLucy is perilously close to death. The Moor suddenly transforms from enemy toloyal friend, and by his superior psychic strength he is able to restore Lucy’shealth and sanity, working this miracle even after his death. The novel has some narrative drive but somuch of its content is sheer silliness, when it isn’t overfilled with pompousoccult explanations, that the reader is left smirking at the spectacle insteadof enjoying the show as presented.

NB: A portion of this entry originally appearedin my column “Late Reviews” in Wormwood,no. 14 (May 2010).

C. Bryson Taylor

2011-12-28T06:00:00.000-08:00

C. Bryson Taylor (b. Washington, D.C., 7 March 1880; d. New York, c. 9 June1936)

Charlotte Bryson Taylor was the daughter of John YeatmanTaylor (1829-1911) and Sabella Barr Bryson (1846-1919). She had a younger brother Andrew BrysonTaylor (1883-1909). Her father had beenmedical director of the United States Navy, and retired in 1891 with the rankof Rear Admiral. Charlottewas educated at private schools in the District of Columbia and in Connecticut. Her first story appeared in The Overland Monthly in 1898, and by1900 her newspaper and magazine work had become regular. She always signed herwork “C. Bryson Taylor”, presumably to disguise her gender. Based out ofWashington D.C., and later out of New York, she published over the span ofabout a decade numerous stories and articles in popular magazines, most notablyin Everybody’s Magazine, but also in Munsey’s Magazine, All-Story Magazine, TheCosmopolitan Magazine and TheDelineator.

Taylor’s firstnovel was In the Dwellings of theWilderness (New York: Henry Holt,1904), a short fantasy in which archeologists Deane and Merritt and their menunearth the mummy of a high ranking woman from its sealed tomb in Egypt. Theevidence suggests that she was walled-in while alive, behind a door marked“forbidden”, in order to trap the devil soul that possessed her. The next morning the mummy hasdisappeared—soon afterwards a beautiful woman tries to lure some of the meninto the desert. Those who follow her are never seen again. The leader Deanegets lost searching for one of his men, and is attacked by something whichbites his shoulder, attempting to suck his blood. Deane escapes, but the next day he and theexpedition leave the desert to its secrets. This short novel, published in April 1904, is well-written andevocative, an understated but atmospheric tale perhaps influenced by BramStoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars,published in England in June 1903.

Taylor’s second novel, Nicanor:Teller of Tales (Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1906), was illustrated by Troy and Margaret WestKinney, and it is a more ambitious enterprise, if a less lasting one. Set in

Britain

during the Roman occupation, it tells of Nicanor, the son of a peasant. Nicanorbecomes enraptured by the story of the Christ-child, and in retelling itbecomes a captivating storyteller himself. The book was well received at the time of its publication.

Taylor’s brother waskilled in an automobile accident in 1909. In 1911, her father, after some yearsof declining health, shot himself in the head. Taylor’spublished output ceased, and for a while she worked on the staff of Everybody’s Magazine, to which she hadbeen a regular contributor. Taylormarried Anderson Oakes Randall (c. 1882-1917) in November 1912. After her husband’s death in New York in May 1917,she disappeared from public life, and died in early June 1936. She was buriedin the family plot near her husband and mother in Green-WoodCemetery in Brooklynon June 13, 1936.

NB: Anearlier version of this entry appeared in my column “Notes on NeglectedFantasists”, Fastitocalon no. 2(2010).

G. S. Tancred

2011-12-25T12:39:00.000-08:00

G. S. Tancred (b.Christchurch, New Zealand, 19 October 1868; d. Kensington, London, 8 February 1959)

Gwendoline SybilTancred was the second of six children of Sir Thomas Selby Tancred (1840-1910),a railway and mining engineer, after 1880 the 8th Baronet of Boroughbridge inthe County of York, and Mary Harriet Hemans(1846-1918). Gwendoline had one older sister, two younger sisters and twoyounger brothers. Her family moved back to England when she was young, andGwendoline was educated at Fauconberg House, the Cheltenham Ladies’College in Gloucestershire. Of hersisters, Edith Mary Tancred (1873-1953) was active in the women’s policeservice. Her brother Thomas SelbyTancred (1870-1945) became the 9th Baronet. He married the eldest daughter of SirJohn Grant Lawson, the 1st Baronet of Knavesmire, and in 1914 assumed by deedpoll the name Sir Thomas Selby Lawson-Tancred. Her other brother Francis Willoughby Tancred(1874-1925), dabbled in poetry, and was a member of the Poets’ Club establishedby T. E. Hulme. As F.W. Tancred, he publisheda single, slim volume Poems in1907.

G. S. Tancred alsopublished a single book, an anthology of poetry, Realities: An Anthology of Verse (Leeds: At the Swan Press,London: Gay and Hancock Limited, 1927), which is most notable for the inclusionof an original poem “The Nameless Land” by J. R. R. Tolkien (reprinted, forthose interested in reading it, in TheLost Road, pp. 98-100, published in 1987). A slim book of only 32 pages, itcontains 21 poems (plus verse by the editor used as epigram). Compiled as a benefit anthology for the Queen’sHospital for Children in Hackney, Bethnal Green. The hospital had originally been foundedunder another name by two Quaker sisters in 1867, becoming the Queen’s Hospitalfor Children in 1907. In 1942 itamalgamated with another hospital to become Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital forChildren, operating until 1996 when services were moved elsewhere and thebuildings left vacant. Realities isdedicated by Tancred to her nephews and nieces; she never married.

The Swan Press was asmall publishing outfit run in Leeds from 1922through 1929 by S[ydney] Matthewman (1902-1970), whose father ran a printingfirm. Many of the five or so dozenpublications that issued from the Swan Press were poetry collections, oftenwritten by Matthewman himself or some of his friends; some of the chapbooks hadvery small limitations. Many names recur in the various little collections,like Wilfred Rowland Childe, Alberta Vickridge, Lorna Keeling Collard, LadyMargaret Sackville, Albert Wainwright (for art and decorations), and even J. R.R. Tolkien. In Realities, there are two poems by S. Matthewman,two by Alberta Vickridge, and one each by Wilfred Rowland Childe, and MargaretSackville. As "Gwendoline S. Tancred" the editor contributed three poems (plus the epigrammatical verse). Other better-known contributors include OliverSt. John Gogarty, L.A.G. Strong, and Evelyn Underhill. The poem by G.K. Chesterton is reprinted fromhis volume Poems (1915). Several ofthe Swan Press volumes issued in 1927 and 1928 were co-published with the London firm Gay andHancock.

The frontispiece (noartist is credited) illustrates the editor's epigrammatical poem, which reads in part:

Now wireless withmusic the world has united
To England,Dominions, and Youth,
May the earth by ourwords, our deeds, and our writings,
Be ringed by Love, Beauty and Truth.

Emily Plenderleath Harrison

2011-12-24T19:04:00.000-08:00

Emily Plenderleath Harrison (b.reg. Hart, Durham, Oct.-Dec. 1843; d. reg. Windsor, Berkshire, Oct.-Dec.1933)

Emily Plenderleath Harrison was the fourth of elevendaughters of William Gorst Harrison (1803-1891), the oldest of five sons ofshipbroker William Harrison of Thornhill, Sunderland.In a brief introduction to her sole book, TheLion’s Birthday (Eton, London, and Colchester: Spottiswoode, Ballantyne& Co., [1920]), Harrison notes that the book was written by her sister andherself more than sixty years earlier (i.e., before 1860), and though she admittedto collaboration, she did not name any one of her sisters on the title page asco-author. This short children’s book contains illustrations by DoraBarks, and a one-paragraph “Foreword” by M.R. James, the noted ghost storywriter, then Provost of Eton College. Harrison workedat Eton College from around 1890, and from thatwork came her association with James. Harrisonnever married, and died in late 1933, aged 89.

The Lion’s Birthdayis a story told in forty verses, each containing four lines. The storytells of the Lion, who in order to celebrate the ten years he has been monarchof the wood and plain, sends out invitations to the various animals to join himfor a party. Not all the animals are eager:

The Elephant, in private, thought

That it would be an awful bore;

But yet he thought he ought to go

As he had never been before.

The Tigers, Wolves and Pantherssaid

“Pray tell the Lion we’ll becharmed.”

The Stags (poor things!) repliedthe same,

But inwardly they felt alarmed.

The monkeys are excited, the sheep are shy (fearing that theWolves surely would be there), the Bears and Leopards were delighted. Alas, the party does not work out so well, for the Tiger is tempted by the Deerand kills her, breaking everything up, and some animals giving chase to themurderer.

James ironically calls the story a “pleasant ballad” in hisforeword.

NB: A slightly different version of this entry previously appeared at here at Wormwoodiana.

Bassett Morgan

2011-12-21T14:41:00.000-08:00

Bassett Morgan (b.Chatham, Ontario,26 November 1884; d. Alameda, California, 28 January 1977)

Grace Ethel Jones was the daughter of British-born parents, EdwinBassett Jones (1846-1910s?) and Emily Dunkley (1851-1920s?), whose familiesemigrated to Canadawhen they were very young. Grace Jones had two older brothers; the family grewup in Chatham, in southwestern Ontario, where Edwin Jones was WaterworksSuperintendent and City Engineer. Grace Jones married Thomas Russell Morgan (1881-1930s?) on 20 August 1905; the couple had one daughter and one son. They emigrated to the United States around 1918, settling in Alameda, California,where Grace Jones Morgan died in 1977 at the age of 92.

Bassett Morgan's first cover
illustration, September 1927

She is best remembered as acontributor to Weird Tales, in whosepages she published thirteen stories, between 1926 and 1936, under the pen-name“Bassett Morgan,” which was made up of her father’s middle name combined withher own married name. And though shealso contributed to Ghost Stories,most of her writing appeared outside the weird-fiction field in periodicalsranging from The Royal Magazine, Cassell’s Magazine, The Smart Set, Argosy, All-Story, Munsey’s Magazine, SeaStories, Boy’s Life, Woman’s Journal, Top Notch, and Black Mask,among many others. She also publishedthree novels, two under her real name and the third under her pseudonym.

The 1928 New York edition
of Morgan's first book

Salvage All (New York: Thomas Crowell,1928; London: Grant Richards, 1928), as by Grace Jones Morgan, concerns a youngstreet waif at a British Columbiaseaport, and the men who seek to aid or abuse her. Tentsof Shem (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Company, 1930), also publishedas by Grace Jones Morgan, is a complicated story of a reckless young woman,born of an old Irish family and a San Francisco dancing girl with lax morals,who could not escape her heritage. TheGolden Rupee (London: John Long, 1935), as by Bassett Morgan, is a South Seaadventure of young Captain Paradise, who murders a leper and takes the man’streasure, including an intricately beautiful model of a ship called the “GoldenRupee.” Captain Paradise has a vesselbuilt to this design, but he is fated never to sail in it, as he is killed by arival the night before his wedding, and his rival takes the ship. However, theghost of Captain Paradise still rules over the lives of those who had known him,with tragic results.

In 1974,under her full name Grace Jones Morgan she introduced and self-published anedition limited to one hundred numbered copies of her father’s autobiography, The Recollections of Edwin Bassett Jones. This gives some accounts of his amateurarcheological work, including his finds of Indian artifacts and of a mastodon.

NB: An earlierversion of this entry appeared in my column “Notes on Lost and ForgottenWriters” in All Hallows no. 42(October 2006).

Morgan's second and last
cover illustration , January 1935

A Bibliography of Bassett Morgan's weird fiction:

Bimini

Weird Tales,January 1929

Donald A. Wollheim, ed. Avon Fantasy Reader 10 (1949)

Black Bagheela

Weird Tales,January 1935

The Demon Doom of N’Yeng Sen

Weird Tales,August 1929

The Devils of Po Sung

Weird Tales,December 1927

T. EverettHarré, ed. Beware After Dark! (1929)

Christine Campbell Thomson, ed. By Daylight Only (1929)

Weird Tales,March 1939

Kurt Singer, ed. SatanicOmnibus (1973)

Kurt Singer, ed. Shriek(1974)

Gray Ghouls

Weird Tales,July 1927

Weird Tales, September1939

Donald A. Wollheim, ed. Avon Fantasy Reader 15 (1951)

The Head

Weird Tales,February 1927

The Island of Doom

Weird Tales,March 1932

Christine Campbell Thomson, ed. Grim Death (1932)

Christine Campbell Thomson, ed. Not at Night (Arrow, 1960)

Laocoon

Weird Tales,July 1926

Christine Campbell Thomson, ed. You'll Need a Night Light (1927)

Herbert Asbury, ed. Notat Night! (1928)

Weird Tales, December1937

Hugh Lamb, ed. StarBook of Horror No. 2 (1976)

Midas

Weird Tales,November 1936

The Punishment of BarneyMuldoon

Ghost Stories, October1929

Mike Ashley, ed. PhantomPerfumes and Other Shades (2000)

The Skeleton under the Lamp

Weird Tales,May 1928

Tiger Dust

Weird Tales,April 1933

Christine Campbell Thomson, ed. Keep on the Light (1933)

Donald A. Wollheim, ed. Avon Fantasy Reader 12 (1950)

Weird Tales, January1954

Short Stories,Feb. 1959

The Vengeance of Ti Fong

Weird Tales,December 1934

The Wolf Woman

Weird Tales, September 1927

Robert Weinberg, ed. TheEighth Green Man and Other

Strange Folk (1989)

Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dzemianowicz, Martin H.

Greenberg,eds. Weird VampireTales (1992)

Robert Emmett McDowell

2011-12-19T14:47:00.000-08:00

Robert Emmett McDowell (b. Sentinel, Oklahoma,5 April 1914; d. Louisville, Kentucky, 29 March 1975)

Robert EmmettMcDowell was the eldest of two children, the only son of Robert ChesterMcDowell (1886-1971) and [Alice]Lucile Furnas (1884-1965). His sister was Sara Jean McDowell (1917-1994). Their mother, Lucile Furnas, was the firstcousin of Wilna Ensley (1884-1971), the mother of writer Evangeline Ensley(1907-1996), who wrote as “Evangeline Walton”. Thus Robert Emmett McDowell andEvangeline Ensley, sharing the same great-grandparents, were second cousins. Theycertainly knew one another’s writings, for the older members of their familieskept in close contact, and in a letter from 1978 Walton named McDowell anexample of another writer in her extended family.

McDowell is remembered primarily asa Kentuckyhistorian, but he got his start writing for the pulp magazines. Though born in Oklahoma,his family shortly thereafter removed to Louisville,where the McDowell family had strong ancestral ties. McDowell remained based inLouisville forthe rest of his life. He was educated atthe Du Pont Manual High School and attended the University of Louisvillefor 1935-36. On August 31, 1940, he married Audrey Adams (1919-2004), whoworked for many years with the Talking Book Department of the American PrintingHouse for the Blind, before becoming a copywriter for advertising agencies. Theyhad one son, Robert Emmett McDowell, Jr.

McDowell served in the Merchant Marinesduring World War II, visiting much of Europe and northern Africain the process. It was late in the war that McDowell started writing. His first story was bylined with his fullname, but after that, and throughout the 1940s and 1950s, he signed his work “EmmettMcDowell”, returning to the use of his full name in the 1960s.

Planet Stories, Winter 1945, cover
for McDowell's "The Great Green Blight"

Between 1945 and 1954 McDowellpublished just under forty stories and novelettes in the pulp magazines. The first was a science fiction tale, “TheHappy Castaways”, in the Spring 1945 issue of Planet Stories, McDowell’s most fruitful venue. Ten further stories would appear in thismagazine through 1950. McDowell soldthree stories to Amazing Stories, atleast one (“The Wandering Egos” April 1948) to editor Ray Palmer, with one tohis successor Howard Browne (“What Price Gloria?” July 1951), and one (“Hereafter”April 1950) that appeared in an interim issue that could have been bought byeither editor. Another tale appeared in StartlingStories (“Realities Unlimited, July 1948), and McDowell also sold a singlestory to John W. Campbell at AstoundingScience Fiction, “Veiled Island” in the January1946 issue. (This is one of the few McDowell stories to have been reprinted—GroffConklin used it in his 1955 anthology ScienceFiction Adventures in Mutation.)

Of his writing career, McDowellwrote in a profile in Planet Stories(Spring 1948): “I like to write. I haven’tany axe to grind, unless it’s about people who think a story should fulfillsome purpose other than entertainment. ‘Didn’t you enjoy it?’ That should bethe final criterion. I’d like to be able to write stories that you couldn’t putdown and that you regretted coming to an end.”

McDowell’s versatility is shown byhis contributions to other genre magazines, like Jungle Stories (adventure tales set in Africa),Frontier Stories (westerns), and Action Stories (action adventures). JungleStories was McDowell’s second-most prolific outlet—he published sevenstories in the magazine between 1946 and 1949. Jungle Stories, Frontier Stories, Action Stories, as well as PlanetStories, were all owned by one publishing firm, Fiction House, so it seemslikely that McDowell benefited from good relations with some in-house editor,for more than half of his pulp stories appeared in Fiction House magazines.

In 1949 McDowell broke into Adventure, then still one of the mostprestigious pulp magazines, with two stories (“Master Thee ad’ Thou” October1949; and “Cave-Inn Rock” July 1950). Also in 1949, he began to shift over tothe writing of detective fiction, with two stories in Detective Tales (“Charge Off the Body!” May 1949; and “SomebodyKilled My Gal!” September 1949). Others mysteriesappeared in Popular Detective (“DamesHave Two”, July 1952) and McDowell’s final two pulps stories were in Triple Detective (“All She Wants IsMoney” Summer 1953; and “The Tattooed Nude” Winter 1954).

McDowell turned to mass-marketpublishing in the mid-1950s, as the pulp magazines were dying out. His first book, Switcheroo (New York: Ace Books, 1954), was one half of an AceDouble (D51), with Lawrence Treat’s Over the Edge the corresponding otherhalf of the paperback. McDowell authoredboth halves of his other Ace Doubles (D-329 and D-445): Threefor the Gallows / Stamped for Death(New York: Ace Books, 1958), and Bloodline to Murder / In the Kill (New York: Ace Books,1960). All of these are detective stories,and several have the recurring character Jonathan Knox, besides being set in Kentucky.

Front and rear covers for Ace Double D-445

In the 1950s McDowell becameincreasing interested in Kentucky history,particularly that of the Louisvillearea. He joined The Filson Club in May 1956, and was a devotedmember for the rest of his life. TheFilson Club—now called The Filson Historical Society—was founded in 1884 and worksto preserve the history, tradition and culture of Kentuckyand the Ohio valley.

McDowell’s first hardcover book (andfrom here on he mostly used as byline his full-name) was the historical adventure novelTidewater Sprig (New York: Crown, 1961), which is set in the pioneerdays in Kentucky when the salt found locally in licks (particularly BullettLick to the south of Louisville) was a vital and valuable resource for the preservationof food. His next book, City of Conflict(Louisville: Louisville Civil War Round Table, 1962), is a nonfiction study of Louisville during theCivil War. McDowell’s play, “Home Is the Hunter”, about the establishment ofthe first permanent settlement in Kentucky in 1774 at Harrod’s Town, wasperformed each summer in modern Harrodsburg from 1963-65, and it proved popular.A historical novel about Daniel Boone, Portraitof a Victim (New York: Avalon Books,1964), also appeared at this time. Hecontributed numerous article on historical subjects to The LouisvilleCourier-Journal Magazine, The Louisville Magazine, and The Filson Club HistoryQuarterly.

McDowell returned to the mysterygenre with The Hound’s Tooth (NewYork: William Morrow / M. S. Mill,1965), as by Robert McDowell, with what was to be the first of a seriescentering on Floyd Bowman, a deputy in the Kentucky State Police. Though McDowell was reported to be working ona follow-up titled The Sour Mash, itnever appeared. His final book was aguidebook, Re-discoveringKentucky: A Guide for Modern-Day Explorers (Frankfort, KY: KentuckyDepartment of Parks, 1971). In 1971 McDowell became the editor of publicationsat The Filson Club, a position he held until his death four years later, less than one week short of his sixty-firstbirthday. He was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery,Louisville. His widow, inher retirement, worked as an archivist at The Filson Club, where thebulk of McDowell’s papers are now housed.

Joseph A. Margolies

2011-11-26T18:16:00.000-08:00

Joseph A. Margolies (b. Brest-Litovsk, Russia, 25 December 1889; d. West Hartford, Connecticut, 22 June 1982)

Joseph Aaron Margolies emigrated from Russia to the United States when he was twelve. In 1906 he became an office boy and assistant librarian at the Rand School of Social Science in New York. In 1912 he began his career in bookselling at Brentano's. He was a buyer for the New York store from 1923 to 1929, when he left Brentano's to become sales manager of the Covici-Friede publishing house. After that publisher went under in 1938, Margolies returned to Brentano's, where, from 1944-47, he also served as director of the Council of Books in Wartime. In 1945-46 he additionally served as president of the American Booksellers Association. In 1951 Margolies left Brentano's to join the publisher Wilfred Funk Inc. as an executive vice-president. In 1955 he took over the management of the World Affairs Center Bookshop of the Foreign Policy Association and of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, retiring in 1960. On June 30, 1914, he married Bertha Heft; they had two children, daughter Helen (Mrs. Leo Rifkin) and son Peter. Though he resided in Manhattan, Margolies died in a Connecticut nursery home at the age of 92, survived by his second wife Hermine.

Margolies published only one book, the anthology Strange and Fantastic Stories: Fifty Tales of Terror, Horror and Fantasy (New York: Whittlesey House, 1946). The dust-wrapper blurb describes this volume as representing "the secret pasttime of a bookseller's lifetime. . . . The fifty selections were chosen from over 500 outstanding stories over a period of many years." The selections are first-rate, and the anthology must have seemed at the time of publication to be a cornucopia---even though it was oddly arranged by having the stories presented alphabetically by author. Christopher Morley provided a typically breezy Introduction about how his friend of more than three decades, old Joe Margolies, had at last managed to get Morley to introduce his book, despite Morley being late in delivering promised manuscripts to several other publishers. It is unfortunate that Margolies himself contributed nothing beyond the selection---no foreword, no notes, not even a discussion of his principles of selection. One feels the absence, and despite the high quality of the selected stories we as readers would like to have had some peek behind the scenes about how Margolies went about his task of compilation.

In 1948 Margolies returned the favor to Morley by writing an Introduction to the first combined edition of Morley's two classics Parnassus on Wheels & The Haunted Bookshop (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1948). (Despite the title, The Haunted Bookshop, originally published in 1919, is not a supernatural story---the proprietor/bookseller calls his shop haunted because the spirits of the great from literature live on there.) Margolies noted perceptively that "only his success as a writer of books kept Christopher Morley from becoming a great seller of books. In these books he shows a love and knowledge of the book business which only a few of us professionals possess."

In the mid-1950s, Margolies began a book on the history of the book business in America to cover the years from 1900 to 1950---a subject about which he was especially qualified to write. Unfortunately the book was never completed. Of his own experiences from his many years as a bookseller, he left only an oral history interview, conducted in 1971 by Michael Kraus, as part of the Oral History project at Columbia University.

Bernadine Bailey

2011-08-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

Bernadine Bailey (b. Mattoon, Illinois, 12 November 1901; d. Illinois, 21 October 1995)

Bernadine Bailey (née Freeman) spent most of her life in the Chicago area, save for the time she was away at school (Wellesley College, B.A.; University of Chicago, M.A.; and Sorbonne, University of Paris, certificate), and a period she spent in Indianapolis after her marriage to hospital scientist John Hays Bailey. By the mid-1930s she was back in Chicago, where she worked for various publishers and as a free-lance writer. For a time she was directing staff editor for Childcraft, a long popular educational series for children published first by W.F. Quarrie Co. and afterwards by Field Enterprises (later bought out by World Book). From the 1930s through the 1970s he published a huge number of nonfiction books for children (some by-lined Bernadine Freeman Bailey), one of the earliest being The Follett Picture-Story Book of Indians (1936).

It was probably during her time in Indianapolis around 1930 that she became friends with Evangeline Ensley (1907-1996), who wrote as "Evangeline Walton". When Ensley was visiting Chicago in the summer of 1935, it was Bernadine Bailey who took her to meet Llewellyn Jones (1884-1961), then the literary editor at Willett, Clark and Company. Jones was initially wary of the young woman and her manuscript (afterwards saying that he feared she was a schoolteacher, and he'd just read another schoolteacher's manuscript and hadn't liked it), but when he and others in the firm came to read the manuscript of The Virgin and the Swine (more familiarly known to modern readers as The Island of the Mighty as it was retitled when it was republished in 1970), they were impressed and brought out the first edition in November 1936. Llewellyn Jones took a great interest in Miss Ensley, and planned to publish her novel Witch's House* in the fall of 1937, and was impressed with some of her short stories, a volume of which he thought would enhance her reputation as a writer. Alas, none of these plans came to pass, for relations with Willett, Clark soured very abruptly around May 1937, after Ensley made a visit to Chicago and stopped at her publishers, presumably to inquire why she had never been paid. It was the first of her many disappointments with publishers. Llewellyn Jones also left Willett, Clark later that year. In 1946 Bernadine Bailey assisted Ensley in recovering the copyright of The Virgin and the Swine from Willett, Clark, two years before the remaining assets of the firm were sold off to Harpers.

Bernadine Bailey and Evangeline Ensley remained good friends. The scans accompanying this entry are taken from items sent to Ensley by Bailey (courtesy of Louise Hammond).

*Published as Witch House by August Derleth's Arkham House in 1945.

Peter Penzoldt

2011-08-14T15:00:00.001-07:00

Peter Penzoldt (b. Munich, Germany, 18 January 1925; d. Geneva, Switzerland, 21 August 1969)

Peter Penzoldt was the son of Fritz Penzoldt (1888-1959) and the famous Wagnerian contralto Sigrid Onégin (1889-1943), whose first husband had been the great Russian impressario Eugen Borisowitsch Onégin (1888-1919). Fritz Penzoldt was a medical doctor who also wrote novels and who published, in 1939, a biography of his wife. His brother was Ernst Penzoldt (1892-1955), an artist, sculptor and writer, well-known in Germany. As a young boy Peter often stayed with his uncle while his mother was on tour. His family settled in Switzerland in the early 1930s.

The dust-wrapper of the 1952 first edition.

Peter Penzoldt’s doctoral thesis at the University of Geneva, The Supernatural in Fiction was written when he was twenty-four and published three years later; it was the major professional publication of his life. After receiving his degree, he taught for a year in Geneva, and married Rachel Vallette, with whom he had one daughter, Silviana. He came to America in 1950, and taught for two years at San Francisco State College. In 1951 he became a naturalized American citizen. The following year his thesis appeared in book form, and he accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Classics and German at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. In 1954 he moved to the Modern Language Department at Sweet Briar, where he remained for the rest of his life. After his father’s death, he donated a large collection of his mother’s songs, recordings, scores and books to the Sweet Briar College Library. He became a full professor in 1962, and in 1965 The Supernatural in Fiction was reprinted by the Humanities Press of New York. Penzoldt died while visiting his wife’s family in Geneva in August 1969.

The Supernatural in Fiction was published by Peter Nevill of London on the recommendation of Algernon Blackwood, who had recently issued two books with Nevill, the omnibus Tales of the Uncanny and the Supernatural (in October 1949), and a new edition (adding photographs) of Blackwood’s autobiography, Episodes before Thirty (published March 1950). The Supernatural in Fiction was dedicated to Blackwood, who had come to know Penzoldt in Switzerland in 1949, some months after they had begun corresponding. Sadly, Blackwood died in December 1951 before he could see the finished book, which appeared the following year. A number of Blackwood’s letters to Penzoldt are quoted in the book, giving a valuable perspective and authority to the coverage of Blackwood’s writings. Penzoldt also gives credit for assistance to August Derleth, Edward Wagenknecht, and other noted anthologists, so he seems to have been particularly enterprising in his research, and the end-result is the better for his diligence.

Penzoldt’s approach to the genre was, for its time, unusually thorough, concentrating on English and American short stories. His book is divided into two parts—the first covering the structure and motifs of supernatural stories, and the second devoted to specific practitioners, like Le Fanu, Kipling, M. R. James, and Walter de la Mare. One chapter is devoted to Blackwood, whom Penzoldt called “the greatest of them all.” Machen and Lovecraft, among others, are covered in a chapter devoted to “The Pure Tale of Horror.”

Penzoldt’s book followed two other pioneering studies, The Supernatural in Modern Fiction (1917) by Dorothy Scarborough, and The Tale of Terror (1921) by Edith Birkhead. All three books have flaws, but each contains material of value for the modern reader and critic of supernatural fiction. Penzoldt has his own idiosyncrasies. He seems at times too technically analytic (though these details remain valuable), and seems at other times too Freudian, while his high-handed dismissal of stories containing descriptions of sadism, like Kipling’s “The Mark of the Beast,” seems puritanical to the modern reader: “How such tales can be constantly republished in the face of the laws against pornography is an unsolved mystery.” Fortunately such critical lapses are not common, and Penzoldt closes with a more sensible affirmation: “I wish most of all that this book should do something to affirm the dignity of the weird tale, that it should show that some of the best modern literature has appeared in this form” (p. 256). These are sentiments with which most of Penzoldt’s readers will agree.

Blanche Bloor Schleppey

2011-08-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

Blanche Bloor Schleppey (b. near Edinburgh, Indiana, 8 August 1861; d. Indianapolis, Indiana, 13 February 1927)

A Hoosier writer of short stories and newspaper features, Blanche D. Bloor was born near Edinburgh, Indiana, on 8 August 1861, and educated at the Oldenburg Academy, a Catholic high school. She married John Hart Schleppey (1861-1946) in 1887, and moved to Crawfordsville, where she lived across the street from Lew Wallace, the Civil War general and author of Ben Hur (1880). Moving to Indianapolis in 1893, Schleppey began to write illustrated feature articles for the Indianapolis Sentinel and other newspapers. She was also active in women’s clubs in the city.

Her only book was the now very rare short story collection, The Soul of a Mummy and Other Stories (1908). Privately printed and self-published, it contains eleven stories, most of which, despite the book’s title, are only marginally weird. (The title story concerns a bachelor sent to Cairo to procure a mummy for a private collection. A young woman escapes her father by hiding in the mummy case. The bachelor helps her and they marry.) Schleppey was ill with a tumor and confined to her home for the last ten years of her life. She died in a hospital in Indianapolis in February 1927 at the age of sixty-five. She is buried at the Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.

Her final publication, a “Sonnet to My Doctor”, appeared in Indiana Poetry (1925), compiled by Eletha Mae Taylor. Her only child, son Bloor Schleppey (1888-1975), was a newspaper reporter for the Keith Syndicate, and later became nationally-known as a strike-breaker for newspaper publishers. In 1973 he self-published a small book, Plow Deep and Straight, a selection from his weekly newspaper column, “The Furrow”, which had appeared in The Zionsville Times of Zionsville, Indiana, from 1935-1971. The columns are deeply conservative politically, a label of which Bloor Schleppey was quite proud.

Despite the dates of the columns being given on the cover as beginning in 1921, the columns range from 1935-1971

NB: An earlier version of this entry appeared in my column "Notes on Lost and Forgotten Writers" in All Hallows, no. 42 (October 2006).

Dorothy M. Grobe Litersky

2011-08-08T17:00:00.000-07:00

Dorothy M. Grobe Litersky (b. Wisconsin, 29 February 1916; d. Boynton Beach, Florida, 26 September 2002)

Dorothy Grobe was born of English parents who divorced before she was four. She grew up in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Little is known of her life. Her sole published book is Derleth: Hawk . . . and Dove (Aurora, Colorado: The National Writers Press, dated 1997 but not published until mid-1998), a vanity-published biography of the Wisconsin author, editor, and publisher August Derleth (1909-1971). In the summer of 1964, Litersky was one of the four founders of the School of the Arts at Rhinelander in northern Wisconsin. Derleth became a regular writer-in-residence at the Rhinelander program, and it was at this time that Litersky decided to write Derleth's biography, a task that would take her thirty years to complete. According to her acknowledgements in the published book, she nearly died twice before completing it, and one must consider it remarkable that she, in her eighties and in poor health, did so. However, that cannot excuse the many problems of the work itself. Much of it is based on the vast archive of Derleth's papers--itself incomplete--that was given to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin after his death, and so the story it presents is mostly Derleth's own view, warts and all. Litersky says that Derleth "wanted a portrayal of the whole man, free of the closet of lies he had been forced to hide in throughout his lifetime" (p. ix). And while Litersky succeeds in presenting Derleth as a egotistical, conceited, manipulative, omnisexual and voracious cad, she fails on the other hand to show why anyone might have admired or even liked either the man himself or his writings, and Derleth's literary work in particular gets short shrift. Litersky's own poor writing is no match for her subject, and she shows little understanding of nuance, which gives rise to a large number of slight misstatements of fact and outright errors. In presenting everything from Derleth's point of view she gives no context to frame or analyze his perspective. Her method of footnoting and sourcing quotations is abominable. Nevertheless one comes to feel that the basic, unattractive portrait of Derleth that emerges is at the least authentic to those sides of his character. Until such time as someone attempts a true scholarly biography, this may be all we have to weigh-in against simple and more common adulatory fan criticism.

Sara Gerstle

2011-08-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

Sara Gerstle (b. San Francisco, California, 16 November 1874; d. New York, New York, 17 August 1956)

Sara Hecht was the daughter of M. H. Hecht, a shoe merchant of German descent, and his wife Alice. In October 1896 she married William Lewis Gerstle (1868-1947), the son of Lewis Gerstle (1824-1892), the Vice President of the Alaska Commercial Company. The Gerstle family was very affluent, having a house on Washington Street in San Francisco, and a summer home in San Rafael. In the late 1920s, William L. Gerstle was the president of the San Francisco Art commission.

William and Sara Gerstle had one child, daughter Miriam Alice Gerstle (1898-1989), who became an artist and who married the British architect Grey Wornum (1888-1957), the designer of the Royal Institute of British Architects building in London, completed in 1934.

Late in life, while in the hospital, Sara Gerstle wrote some short stories while recuperating from an illness. Two small books of these stories were printed in fine press editions limited to 150 copies. Four Ghost Stories (San Francisco: Adrian Wilson, Printer at the Sign of the Interplayers, 1951) has a short introduction by the author’s daughter, signed M. W. [Miriam Wornum]. The follow-up booklet is Three Houses (San Francisco: Adrian Wilson, Printer at the Sign of the Interplayers, 1952). The blurb on the latter describes the contents as follows: “Here is another small book by Sara Gerstle which leaves the ghosts not quite so much in possession. Last time they had it all their own way, slithering and sliding at their own pace through the pages. Here the three houses are of first importance, and though none of them are quite what they seem to be, it is a slow infiltration, a glance over one’s shoulder, and a thought after the light has been put out, that makes this not a book of ghosts, but a book of houses with a question mark. Two of the houses have been lived in by the author.” The autobiographical element is apparent in the only story to have been reprinted from these rare volumes, “Death of a Good Cook,” which can be found in Haunted San Francisco (2004), edited by Rand Richards. It reads very much like the usual tale of a personal encounter with the supernatural; it is matter-of-factly told, with little interest in atmosphere or effect. Thus, it is more a specimen of folk tale than of literary creation.

De Witt Newbury

2011-07-21T20:56:00.000-07:00

De Witt Newbury (b. New York, New York, 10 July 1888; d. Riverdale, New Jersey, December 1967)

De Witt Newbury published no books, but he was a frequent contributor to the pulps magazines in the 1940s and 1950s, specializing in westerns and in adventure stories, some of which were stories about the Vikings, all of which showcase Newbury's interest in history.

He was born De Witt Mirrielees Newbury in New York, the son of George Newbury, a shipping manager of Canadian and British descent, and his wife Jessie, née Mirrielees, whose parents came from Scotland and Wales. De Witt Newbury had an older brother and a younger sister; he seems never to have married. Early in the twentieth century, the Newbury family moved to a house on the Pompton Newark Turnpike in Riverdale, New Jersey, where De Witt lived the rest of his life. He worked for a time in advertizing, and then followed his father as the manager of a shipping firm, but in the late 1930s, he turned to writing. His first pulp story seems to have been "Good Men's Luck" in Adventure in July 1939. This was followed by some Viking stories in Adventure, and further ones in Argosy in 1943 and, later in the decade, in Blue Book. He published one novelette, "A Man Can Swear", in Doc Savage (June 1946). Otherwise, he contributed more regularly to Frontier Stories, where eight tales appeared between 1946 and 1953. His last known short story appeared in Western Short Stories in June 1954.

The former home of De Witt Newbury, in Riverdale, New Jersey

Lyllian Huntley Harris

2011-07-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

Lyllian Huntley Harris (b. Fulton County, near Atlanta, Georgia, September 1883; d. Sandersville, Georgia, 12 January 1939)

Lyllian Brantley Huntley was an only child whose parents divorced when she was young. She was raised by her mother, Mattie May (Pringle) Huntley. On December 5, 1905, in Macon, Georgia, Lyllian married John Joseph Harris (1881-1951), a lawyer (and after 1933, a judge). They settled in Sandersville, where both had grown up. They had no children. Lyllian Huntley Harris was a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Southern States, and lived most of her life in central Georgia.

Harris had only one significant publication, the short story "The Vow on Halloween" which appeared in the May-July 1924 issue of Weird Tales, the last of the large bedsheet style format. With the title spelled slightly differently (as "The Vow on Hallowe'en") the story was fraudulantly attributed to noted Irish writer Dorothy Macardle (1889-1955) by Peter Haining and included in his anthology Hallowe'en Hauntings (London: William Kimber, 1984). Haining even claimed the story had appeared in a 1922 issue of Eire, where it did not. This is a typical example of the brazen fraud that Haining engaged in while putting together his many anthologies; the scope of this fraud has only become apparent in recent years. "The Vow on Halloween" is being reprinted with its correct author name in Paula Guran's anthology Halloween, to be published by Prime Books in late September 2011. **UPDATE, see comments below: in the end this story was not included in Paula Guran's anthology.**

Charles F. Hall

2011-07-12T17:49:00.000-07:00

Charles F. Hall (British, fl. 1938)

Virtually nothing is known about Charles F. Hall, beyond his stories. (If anyone can tell me more about him, I'll be pleased to hear it.) He published two stories in the short-lived British science fiction magazine, Tales of Wonder, edited by Walter H. Gillings. Sixteen issues of Tales of Wonder were published between 1937 and 1942. Both of Hall's stories are imitative of H.G. Wells. The first, "The Man Who Lived Backwards", appeared in issue no. 3 (Summer 1938). I reprinted this story in my anthology Tales Before Narnia (2008) because it is clearly the story C. S. Lewis mentioned as an influence on himself in his preface to The Great Divorce (1946). The second story, "The Time-Drug", is also about time, and it appeared in issue no. 5 (Winter 1938).

I can now confirm a third story by this writer, "Paid Without Protest," which appeared in the 8 October 1938 issue of a non-genre magazine The Passing Show (v. 7 no. 342), where is is signed "C. F. Hall." That this is the same author is evidenced in the November 1938 issue of Novae Terrae, the first British science fiction fanzine, where it refers to Hall as "author of [the] hit story 'The Man Who Lived Backwards' " and notes the new story is about "an apparent television-phone" (p. 25), so it's a third science fiction tale.

The cover of the issue of the "highly coloured" magazine of "scientifiction" containing Hall's "The Man Who Lived Backwards" which influenced C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce

About the only biographical information I can find on Hall comes from the Spring 1938 issue of Tomorrow, where it says that "A new British author whose work promises to be immediately popular appears in the person of C.F. Hall, a member of B.I.S., who contributes 'The Man Who Lived Backwards' as his first published story" (p. 6). The B.I.S. is the British Interplanetary Society.

The noted science-fiction historian Mike Ashley has told me that he once asked Walt Gillings about the lesser-known contributors to Tales of Wonder, and Gillings noted "I never heard again from Charles F. Hall (real name) after running "The Time-Drug" in Tales of Wonder: a pity, because he was very promising in spite of sticking too closely to Wells." Gillings suggested that Hall might have been from Hull, but then wondered at the similarity between Hall and Hull (information courtesy of Mike Ashley).

So that's it. Three short stories, all published in 1938. And then silence.

Alex E. Urquhart

2011-06-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

Alex E. Urquhart (b. Scotland, 4 August 1900; d. Wales, 29 March 1997)

21st Year (1928)

A tale of piracy on the China Sea

Alexander Ernest Urquhart settled in Cardiff in 1932, and remained there the rest of his long life. Earlier he had done some writing for the Boys Annuals published in the 1920s by Oxford University Press. Initially, Urquhart had been given plots to write out by the prolific Walter C. Rhoades (1860-1927), with the stories appearing under Rhoades's name; but a small number of stories were published under Urquhart's own name in The Oxford Annual for Boys: 20th Year (1927) and The Oxford Annual for Boys: 21st Year (1928), and The Great Book for Boys (1930), all edited by Herbert Strang. After moving to Cardiff, Urquhart met and became a close friend of the great Welsh fantasist and theosophist, Kenneth Morris (1879-1937). He was Morris's literary executor and saw to the preservation of Morris's manuscripts, like the novel The Chalchiuhite Dragon (finished 1935, published 1992). In his later years he assisted scholars working on Morris, and Urquhart was one of the two dedicatees of The Dragon Path: Collected Tales of Kenneth Morris (1995).

Stanley Hopkins Jr.

2011-06-02T12:53:00.000-07:00

Stanley Hopkins, Jr. (b. Long Island, New York, 27 February 1923; d. Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2 May 2002)

"Stanley Hopkins Jr." was a pen-name used by Blythe Morley, the daughter of the novelist and critic Christopher Morley (1890-1957), one of the founding editors of The Saturday Review of Literature, and his wife Helen Booth Fairchild (1894-1966). Blythe Morley was their third daughter (of four children), and was raised in Roslyn, on Long Island. She was educated at Vassar. Her first novel was a mystery, Murder by Inches (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, [1943]), as by Stanley Hopkins Jr. The dust-wrapper blurb is quite entertaining:

This first detective story by a new author has the liveliness and gaiety of youth. The scene is on Long Island near a defense plant. Clues are many and curious, and the plot is contrived with unusual care. Why do the cats of the neighborhood disappear? What does the ruler with divisions of thirty-seconds of an inch mean? Who is the secret visitor Ed Sharp entertained the night he was murdered? This is the kind of story one looks back from the end with complete satisfaction. Good in plot, it is even better in its characters. As Stanley Hopkins himself remarks, the only completely fictitious character in this novel is the author.

The pen-name derives from a minor character in the Sherlock Holmes stories--where Stanley Hopkins is a young Scotland Yard inspector who admires Holmes's detective techniques even if he finds it difficult to apply them to his own work. Blythe Morley's father was a well-known devotee of Sherlock Holmes, and in 1934 he had founded the Baker Street Irregulars, a fan club for Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts that continues to the present. Murder by Inches was well-reviewed--not a bad reception for the twenty-year-old author. A further volume soon appeared, The Parchment Key (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, [1944]), also by Stanley Hopkins Jr. And a final short story, "The Lady Holding a Green Apple", appeared under that pseudonym in the February 1947 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

Blythe Morley's two subsequent novels were published under her own name, The Intemperate Season (New York: Farrar, Straus and Company, 1948) and A Campaign in Time (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1952), after which she ceased publishing. She married James Brennan, and died in New Mexico at the age of 79.

Edgar Magnus Birnstingl

2011-06-01T12:14:00.000-07:00

Edgar Magnus Birnstingl (b. Limpsfield, Surrey, 27 August 1898; d. Kensington, London, 24 February 1915)

Edgar Magnus Birnstingl was the youngest of three sons of Avigdor Lewis Birnstingl (1853-1924), a stock broker, and Cordelia (1865-1917), née Pyke, who were married in 1888. He grew up in Kensington, and entered St. Paul’s School in 1911. After his death at the age of sixteen, some of the stories he had written in the previous two years were collected and privately issued as Destur Mobed and Other Stories ([Oxford]: Printed for Private Circulation, 1915). This slim volume contains fifteen stories and an appendix, a photographic portrait of the author as frontispiece, and a “Prefatory Note” signed “E.L.” [Elizabeth Lee]. Some of the stories are mere sketches, others are somewhat longer. Many concern the author’s fascination with gemstones. The “Destur Mobed” (translated as “Complete Master”) of the title story concerns a Babylonian brass statuette of a lion, which grants wishes along with curiously twisted side effects so that the ill-effects dwarf any good fortune. (A second story, “The Case of Galstone’s Eyes,” also concerns the Destur Mobed.) The stories, mostly all imaginative fantasies dealing “with the marvellous, the mysterious, the unusual” (to quote the preface writer), are well-done and worth reading, bringing on the inevitable regret that the young writer didn’t live a long productive life. The volume earned (and deserved) the trade edition of one thousand copies, published by Elkin Mathews in December 1916.

NB: An earlier version of this entry appeared in my column "Late Reviews" in Wormwood, no. 1 (November 2003).