Hal Garrott

Hal Garrott (b. Chicago, Illinois, 21 June 1877; d. Los Altos, California, 21 October 1968)

Hal Garrott was the working name of Henry Claggert Garrott, the son of Erasmus R. Garrott (1836-1897), a physician who became the chief medical officer of the Chicago Health Department, and his wife Florence Lee (1844-1930), who were married in Chicago on 20 December 1867. Hal was the second of four children, with older and younger sisters, and a younger brother.

His life is not very well documented, but he claimed to be educated at the Lewis Institute of Chicago (a technical high school founded in 1896), the University of Chicago, the American Conservatory of Music, and in Berlin. 

He married Jane Frances Noble (1873-1945) in St. Louis, Missouri, on 25 November 1901. They settled in Minneapolis, where Garrott managed a confectionery. They had three children, Florence Garrott (1905-1914), Hal Noble Garrott (1906-1932), and Jean Garrott (1907-1997). The marriage broke up after 1920, and on 1 December 1923, in Minneapolis, Garrott married Marian Caplin (1879-1952). 

Garrott and his second wife moved to California around 1926, settling the the Carmel area, where Garrott was the Drama and Music Editor on the Monterey Peninsular Herald. After Marian's death, Garrott married a third time, on 3 January 1956 in Santa Clara, California, to Ruby J. Norton (1877-1974). Garrott died at the age of 91. 

Garrott published three books, all for children, the first two illustrated by Dugald Stewart Walker (1883-1937), a very talented artist and book illustrator, much of whose work was poorly reproduced in books published by second tier publishers. In Garrott's books his characteristic artwork is signed only "Dugald Walker." (John Coulthart has done several blog posts on Walker, including two which focus on his black-and-white work, here and here. The second link includes a couple of illustrations from Garrott's first book.)

All three of Garrott's books were published by Robert M. McBride of New York.  The first, Snythergen, appeared on 24 November 1923, dedicated to Garrott's two surviving children. It tells of a giant boy, who was first fed on round foods that made him stout, and then his alarmed parents fed him only slender items which made him tall and thin. Snythergen runs away from home, and has many adventures, making new friends like Squeaky the pig and Sancho Wing, the goldfinch. The advice of Santa Claus on feeding turns Snythergen into a regular-sized boy. 

 

The book was well-reviewed, and  it has four color plates and many black-and-white illustrations. Garrott's second book, Squiffer, appeared on 1 November 1924. This time the story centers on a Squiffer, a squirrel who wants to be a boy. He, too, has many adventures, with a Bear and some odd characters like the funny man called Red Fairy Hot, "a bad fairy who changes people into animals and then into Bats by sprinkling them with Pink Powder" (p. 63). Some of the story is set in a Candy Palace. With this volume, Walker has only one color illustration (the frontispiece), but many black-and-white ones. Squiffer sold less well than Snythergen, and can be found in cheaper remainder bindings. 

Garrott's third and final book was First-Aide to Santa Claus, published in August 1929, which brings back the boy Snythergen, Squeaky the Pig, Sancho the Goldfinch, the Bear, and Santa Claus. It is dedicated to Garrott's younger sister's two children. A new illustrator, Mary-Ponton Gardner (1883-1957), predominantly a magazine illustrator, provides twenty illustrations, all in black-and-white. Through all three Garrott books there is a diminishment of the amount of art, and sales correspondingly suffered. First-Aide to Santa Clause is Garrott's rarest book. 

 

M.A. Neff

M.A. Neff (b. Rome, Ohio, March 1858*;  d. New York, New York, 6 October 1915) 

M.A. Neff, known familiarly as "Mell," was born Melvin Augustus Neff, the youngest of ten children of  Abraham Neff (1806-1890) and his wife Tabitha Hall (1816-1876), who were married in 1831.

Neff was married twice, the first was in 1883, but it did not last more than a few years. Around 1891 he married Mary A. Haefner (1875-1955). They had two children, James Blaine Neff (1895-1983), and another that died in infancy. Neff and his wife were based in St. Louis in the mid-1890s when their son was born.

In the 1901 U.S. Census, Neff is listed in Cincinnati as a commercial salesman. But he soon gravitated to the growing motion picture industry. Around 1910 he founded the Motion Picture Exhibitors League of America, with annual conventions beginning in 1911. Neff was its President for the last four years of his life. He wrote and produced one full length silent film, The Battle of Ballots, which debuted in August 1915. It is catalogued at the American Film Institute as five-six reels, which translated to 75 to 90 minutes. It is a melodrama that centers around prohibition. Neff appeared as himself in a short documentary newsreel (Gaumont Weekly no. 72), released on 23 July 1913, when he was elected President of the Motion Picture Exhibitors League for the third time.  

Neff's one book was the self-published 118-page paperback Paradise Found, which came out in January 1914. According to Lyman Tower Sargent, in his online version of his classic Utopian Literature in English: An Annotated Bibliography from 1516 to the Present (2016), it describes "a series of worlds, including two eutopias," the first of which is called Paradise. There people live long lives and fly about individually, living in trees. The second eutopia is Square Land, where everyone gets a 'square deal" including a lot on which to build a small house, and a three day work week of six hours each day. The book is very rare. 

Neff died in New York City on 6 October 1915, after a brief illness (kidney trouble), and an unsuccessful operation. 

 *Neff gave his birth details as March 1859 in the 1900 U.S. Census, but other sources suggest the year was 1858. 

Sue Mallinson

Sue Mallinson (b. Derby, Derbyshire, 16 February 1943)

Sue Mallinson is the working name of Susan Elizabeth Mallinson, the second child of Richard Vincent Mallinson (1911-2005) and his wife Mary Ruth ("Molly") Hembry (1914-2006), who were married in Romford, Essex, in late 1935. Sue had an older sister, and two younger brothers, one of whom died in infancy. 

Sue Mallinson worked for BBC television from 1965 to 1988. She was trained as a film director, and worked as Series Producer for a number of programmes, notably on The Book Programme (1977-1979). After she left the BBC she formed her own production company, whose most notable productions include Opera Imaginaire (1993), a fifty-odd minute assembly of animated shorts of famous arias (viewable on youtube here). Mallinson also directed a nearly one-hour documentary for the ITV "Network First" series, titled Entertaining Angels Unawares (broadcast 19 December 1995), covering the history of angels from the point of view of clergymen, scientists, and of people who claim to have encountered angels. Entertaining Angels Unawares is also viewable on youtube, at Mallinson's daughter's channel here. 

She published one novel, The Serpent and the Burrerfly (London: Robert Hale, 1980). She wrote it over seven years during her annual leave at a cottage in Dorset. The dust-wrapper blurb reads:

Lisa Covington is tired of living in London and the superficiality of her work as a journalist. Restless, she takes a six months' sabbatical and moves to the West Country. On her first evening, she and her gypsy dog Imp go for a walk on the moors and are drawn towards a giant Menhir, upon whose face is the ancient carving of a Serpent. The great stone gives Lisa an uneasy feeling and inexplicably she shudders. Just then a butterfly lands upon a small pebble at her feet which takes on a strange purplish glow. Thus the Ancient Forces of good and evil are unleashed and Lisa is propelled into a strange world of magic and mystery where she finds love, danger and a new way of life. Ghosts, psychic forces and witchcraft  abound in this romantic story, blending together to form an unusual and fascinating look into the occult.

The book is very rare today, and Mallinson wrote a sequel, Atlantis Reborn, which has never been published. Mallinson married David Roach, and they had one daughter born around 1983.  Mallinson's production company was dissolved in 2015, when she was living in Ipswich, Suffolk. 

 

(L to R) Sue Mallinson, her grandchild, and her daughter, Amity Roach, c. 2020

 

Bernard C. Blake

Bernard C. Blake (b. reg. Gosport, Hampshire, July-September 1882; d. 9 April 1918, Cocques, France) 

Bernard Cecil Blake was the third son (of three children) of John William Blake (1846-1920), who owned a yacht-fitting shop in Gosport,  and his wife Emma Julia Collins (1846-1934), who were married in 1867. His older brothers were Stanley James Blake (1870-1941), who worked alongside his father, and Victor John Blake (1873-1925), who became a medical doctor. 

Little is known of Blake's youth and education. In early 1892, he sent contributions (evidently letters or puzzles, which appear uncredited) to "The Children's Page" of  The Lady's Pictorial, and a photo of the boy at age nine, with his dog, appeared in the issue for 14 May 1892. He wrote letters to The Boy's Own Paper about five years later.  His first fiction was published in the local Hampshire newspaper (to which his father was a frequent contributor) in 1899. 

His first of three books was At the Change of the Moon (London: Greening & Co, [June] 1902). It contains nine stories, most of which are fairly short, and most of which concern madness or lunacy of some kind. There is a frame story of a competition witnessed at an inn by the narrator over a ten day storm in the 1870s,  whereby two men, Dr. Hermes, a retired brain specialist, and a small shriveled bald-headed man, nicknamed "Pharaoh" by the narrator, try to one-up each other with successive tales. None are atmospheric and rarely hint of the supernatural. Some of the contemporary reviews overpraise the work (e.g., "Mr. Blake has the touch of a fine artist, and knows the value of a suggested horror as against a plainly elaborated one. All who like weird literature and are fond of thrill should read this book" Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, 29 June 1902). 

Blake published five stories, two poems, and a piece of nonfiction in a short-lived small magazine Vectis in early 1903, but his next major work was a epistolary novel, The Peculiar History of Mary Ann Susan: Told by Herself (T. Fisher Unwin, [October] 1903). It is made up of letters from a young lady to her aunt, an amusing and humorous contrast to what Blake notes in a brief preface as novels written "with a purpose." 

In his entry in The Literary Year-Book for 1906 Blake listed himself as a contributor to Punch and to M.A.P. [Mainly about People, edited by T.P. O'Connor].  

Blake's final book was Cain's Wife (Walter Scott Publishing, [16 May] 1906). On publication it was attacked for daring to take on its Biblical subject matter. The Saturday Review called it "a vulgar melodrama" (19 January 1907). Another fairly negative review in the East Anglian Daily Times is worth quoting at length for it gives details about the novel and makes it sound highly interesting:

Mr. Blake does not follow the lines of the Biblical story. He adopts the theory that co-existing with Adam, the Creator put upon the earth another race of women and men, and that amongst the latter were some who possessed attractions for the "sons of God," as Adam and his sons were called to distinguish them from the less favoured "sons of the earth." Cain and Abel play prominent parts in the story: the elder is described as a giant of vast strength but of hideous features, whereas his brother is a magnificently handsome being. Amongst the daughters of the earth are sister patricians named Silave and Naamah, dark and light respectively physically and by nature. The love tangle which sets the four at cross purposes is made responsible for the commission of that crime of fratricide which caused a curse to descend upon Cain. The erring brother, though fierce and elemental, is averse to taking Abel's life until his temptation by the sensuous and revengeful Silave becomes irresistible. The description of that terrible period, and of the dire consequences of the sin of Cain is excellently done; indeed, the power of these portions must atone for the disappointment caused by other chapters. . . . Mr. Blake's greatest fault is his modernising of the actions and language of the actions in the great drama. (16 July 1906) 

After Cain's Wife, Blake apparently ceased publishing, and went to work at his father's shop, until it was sold in 1911. After the War broke out in 1914, he joined the Army and served in North India for two and a half years. Back in England in 1917, he asked that he serve in France in place of a married officer whose wife and family were in India. Incidentally, Blake's last known short story (mentioned in a 1914 newspaper article) appeared in The Regiment--it concerns the misery of a soldier and a woman who rush to marry. Blake himself never married. On April 9th 1918 he was shot in the chest at the Front, and died during subsequent medical treatment. 

Johnny Mains has championed At the Change of the Moon, publishing in 2025 with Mislaid Books an expanded edition (including all the items from Vectis), including a well-illustrated biographical account of what is known of Blake's life.  

 

Eric Ericson

Eric Ericson (b. Blaby, Leicestersire, 23 June 1925; d.reg. North Surrey, Oct-Dec 2006)

In the short span of five years, between 1978 and 1983, Eric Ericson published four books, and then the name disappears from the public record. Three are occult novels, and the fourth is occult nonfiction. The only known facts about him, for many years, were that he was born in 1925 (sourced from the US copyright registrations), and, according to the short biographical note on the rear flap of one of his books, that in 1981 he lived in Sunbury-on-Thames (in North Surrey). Many have suspected that the name was a pseudonym; that is correct. An online commentator has noted that Eric Priestley Towers left his research papers for his 1986 biography of Sir Francis Dashwood (1708-1781) to the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, and an accompanying biographical file records that he wrote novels under the pseudonyms Roderick Milton, Eric Ericson, and Tony Caxton.* I believe this is correct. 

Eric Priestley Towers was the son of Sidney Towers (1900-1968) and Winnifred May Priestley, who were married in Blaby in Leicestershire on 22 June 1924. The couple settled in nearby Wigston Magna. Eric was educated at Newton's Grammar School and at Jesus College, Cambridge. During W.W.II he served in the army in Italy and Austria, and supported the Allied Military Government in Vienna. His first known writings were all published under the name Roderick Milton. These include contributions (stories and articles) to Lilliput magazine throughout the 1950s. His first two books were published by Rupert Hart-Davis, Magic City: Three Stories of Vienna under Allied Occupation (1950), per the title on the dust-wrapper, and The Lightning That Struck Me (1951), the story of a man who wants to escape from behind the Iron Curtain. Tell Them in Sparta (Methuen, 1962) is a historical novel of the Battle of Thermopylae. It came out in paperback from the New English Library in 1964. 

author photo from a Tony Caxton book

 

Towers married Edith Alexandra Kuhnova Bartosch (1917-1977) in 1947, and after her death he married again in 1978 (his second spouse was named Helen: Towers dedicated two books to her). Towers worked professionally in corporate and public relations, so his use of pseudonyms for his secondary interest in writing may be seen as showing discretion. Certainly, for his next brace of books, with their details of the inner workings of sex-magic cults, a pseudonym would have been necessary. These are the four books published as Eric Ericson, three of which are mass market paperbacks from the New English Library. The first, The Sorcerer (February 1978), begins interestingly, with a young scientist introduced into a sex-magick cult by his latest lover. He quickly learns it is a coven of Satanistic witches, led by the sinister Frazer. The writing and plotting are over-the-top in many ways (particularly the sex scenes), but the supernatural powers are real and used mercilessly. 

The second Ericson novel, The Woman Who Slept with Demons (January 1980), continues along the same line, following a young veterinarian who sees a woman having sex with a demon. The book quickly becomes a kind of exploration of various types of sexual debauchery.

The third Ericson book is not a novel but a dictionary of people associated with the dark arts, from artist Aubrey Beardsley to Aleister Crowley, Gilles de Rais, Rasputin and Gerald Gardner. The full title is: The World, the Flesh, the Devil: A Biographical Dictionary (1981). This book was dedicated to Helen.

Master of the Temple (March 1983) is the final Ericson book, and its narrative is interrupted with various info-dumps of occult history (Ericson has even added eleven pages of notes about the story, chapter by chapter, at the end of the book). The main character is both a sales manager for a biscuit company and a sex magician. The narrative alternates between business meetings and sex with women, first in Europe then in America. Back in England it gets even weirder, about which the less said the better.

The three novels published in mass market format have rather garish covers (see below). One can't recommend any of them; they are pulpish, crude, cringe-inducing, and sexist in dated ways. The first two Eric Ericson novels were published in hardcover in the US by St. Martin's of New York. 

Towers published his next book under his own name, as by Eric Towers. It is a reconstructed biography of Sir. Francis Dashwood, an eighteenth century politician around whom legends of black magic and devil worship grew, making up the myth of the Hell Fire Club at Medmenham Abbey in Buckinghamshire. Dashwood: The Man and the Myth (1986) is the second book dedicated to Helen. 

For his last two books, Towers returned to St. Martin's Press of New York, who had published hardcovers of two Eric Ericson novels. These two mystery novels were both set in England, but published only in the US, under the Tony Caxton byline. Murder in a Quiet Place came out in July 1994;  Bowker's Bonfire in March 1996. Both feature Police Inspector Denis Bowler.

* This information appears in the Comments added by "Ged"  to a post on the Ericson novels located here.