H.T.W. Bousfield

H.T.W. Bousfield (b. Sudbury, Derbyshire, 29 May 1891; d. reg. Kensington, London, Jan-March 1965)

Henry Thomas Wishart Bousfield was the second child (and only son) of the Rev. Stephen Bousfield (1850-1903), and his wife, Edith Mary Wishart (1859-1926), who were married on 8 April 1888 in Sudbury. Stephen Bousfield had been educated at St. John's College, Cambridge (B.A. 1872), and was ordained a deacon in 1881, and priest in 1882. He served as Curate of Plaistow, Essex, 1881-1883; Curate of Sudbury, Derbyshire, 1883-1898; and Rector of Shelton, Nottinghamshire, 1898-1903. 

Like his father, Henry went to Cambridge, but to Christ's College (B.A. 1912) instead of St. John's. Afterwards he was appointed Professor of History at the newly-formed Islamia College, Peshawar, North West Frontier, India. During the War he served in North Waziristan, France, and Mesopotamia. After leaving the Army in 1919, he went into business in London, working in advertising and as a bank manager. 

By 1913, he was publishing occasional poems and short stories, later appearing in other venues with occasional non-fiction (one piece, "A Coming Event Foreshadowed" in Pearson's Magazine, August 1919,  recounts Bousfield's occult experience during the war). Some short essays appeared as booklets, Elements of Effective Advertising (1924); RMS Queen Mary: The Ship of Beautiful Woods (c. 1935), an advertisement for the Cunard White Star Line of passenger ships; and It's Time to Think! How to Win the Peace (1943). The short stories for which he won acclaim began appearing in the 1930s, in Britannia and Eve, The Windsor Magazine, and Nash's-Pall Mall Magazine, and continued through the Second World War. Two books collecting his short stories, all competent commercial fiction, were Bousfield's main publications: The God with Four Arms and Other Stories (London: Arthur Barker, 1939), which contains eleven stories, and Vinegar—and Cream (London: John Murray, 1941), which contains twenty-one.

After a few failed engagements (announced in newspapers in the early 1920s), Bousfield married Mary Adeline Guest (1904-1998) in 1929. They had no children. Bousfield died in London at the age of 73 in 1965 (not 1967 as is sometimes given). 

James Doig has collected eight short stories, comprising Bousfield's entire output of fantasy and weird fiction, from Bousfield's two collections, in The Unknown Island and Other Tales of Fantasy and the Supernatural (Ramble House, 2022). Bousfield's best tales concern the revival of pagan motifs in modern culture. "The Unknown Island" (Nash's-Pall Mall Magazine, May 1935) concerns the rediscovery of a gorgon on a Greek island, and is very similar to later stories like William Sambrot's "The Island of Fear" (1958) and C.S. Lewis's science fictional version (set on the Moon), "Forms of Things Unknown" (first published posthumously in 1966). (I have written about these stories previously here.) In "The God with Four Arms" a bronze image of Indra enacts a revenge. A few other stories are witchcraft themed. "The Impossible Adventure" is noteworthy in that it originally appeared in Weird Tales (November 1940), where it was accompanied by one illustration by Hannes Bok. In this story, a man visiting Greece find an injured  young centaur and, after nursing him back to health, takes him to Scotland, with disastrous results. "Death and the Duchess" is a tale of a kind of vampirism by blood transfusion. It was clearly inspired by "The Good Lady Ducayne" (1896) by Mary Elizabeth Braddon.