Morley Troman

Morley Troman (b. Wednesbury, England, 26 February 1918; d. Ploumillian, France, 29 October 2000)

Throughout his life Morley Troman was primarily interested in sculpture and writing. Born Frederick Morley Troman in Staffordshire, he was the son of William H. B. Troman and his wife Beatrice (née Denning), who were married in 1912. After studying drawing and sculpture at the Wolverhampton College of Art, he served in W.W. II and was a prisoner in Germany from 1942-44, after which time he worked in England and Germany as a volunteer aiding concentration camp victims. In 1946 he settled in Paris, and in 1956 bought a farm in Brittany, where he remained for the rest of his life.  In 1946 he married a painter, Shulamith Przepiorka; they had one son and one daughter.

Troman published only two novels, both of which reuse material from Breton legends.  The Hill of Sleep (London: Chatto & Windus, 1960) is narrated by a man returning to an island off the coast of Brittany where fifteen years earlier (in 1944) he had been hunted by German soldiers.  Gradually he pieces together the repercussions of his previous presence on the island. The review by Anne Duchene in The Guardian declares: “The construction is intricate, but handled with authority, the local climate is powerfully summoned up, and the undertow of the uncanny, below the rational event, is impressively embodied in the huge old recluse who sheltered the hero in an cottage on a gorse-bound cliff and who becomes a kind of Celtic king-magician. This is a very solid, imaginative essay, in the full sense of the term” (8 July 1960, p. 4).

The Devil’s Dowry (London: Chatto & Windus, 1961) has a long descriptive subtitle which reads “Being the improbable history of Bilz of Penn Menn and Yseult the Red, with some account of necromancy and wantonness in the country of Ar-Goät, set down from hearsay.” Here young Bilz, the son of a beggar-woman, decides it is his vocation to become a thief.  He learns mimicry and courts Iseult, the daughter of the Lord of Keruez, and must compete with the Devil to save her. Troman’s style in both books is subtle and modern, but it is also at times plodding. 

In addition to sculpting and writing, Troman also did some radio and television work, particularly on Breton subjects, including a series on the restoration of Troman’s seventeenth century farmhouse in Ploumillian. Troman worked at a third novel, The Standing Stone, but it was never published.

David T. Lindsay

David T. Lindsay (fl. 1936-1940)

**Note:  Thanks to information from an anonymous source, I have a new entry on the real David T. Lindsay available here; but I keep this entry for its extensive information on his books**

David Lindsay (1876-1945), who had no middle name, published five novels during his lifetime, ranging from his first, A Voyage to Arcturus (1920), to his fifth, Devil’s Tor (1932).  The Times Literary Supplement reviewed four of Lindsay’s five novels, omitting only Adventures of M. de Mailly (1926), which is generally considered Lindsay’s least intellectual book.  Though the reviewers for The Times Literary Supplement did not always appreciate Lindsay’s novels—and indeed they misunderstood and miscategorized more than two of them—at least the editors considered Lindsay’s work worthy of coverage. 

Thus, in 1936, when further books bylined “David Lindsay” began to appear, so did reviews in The Times Literary Supplement. But after two reviews, published five weeks apart, there were no more.  Presumably the editors realized that this new, prolific David Lindsay—who published eighteen novels between March 1936 and January 1940—was an entirely different author, and one whose books were not worthy of continued coverage.

The first book published and reviewed was The Ninth Plague. Here is what the reviewer—Julian Arthur Beaufort Palmer (1899-1973), author of a few historical books on India—had to say of it:

     A band of burglars, known as the Grey Seals from the grey hoods and overalls in which they operated, were really collecting resources for a maniac who for the sake of revenge wished to exterminate the human race by an event similar to the Ninth Plague of Egypt (darkness) explained by the author as “neutralizing the chemical rays of the sun.”  This involved the construction of a platinum-lined retreat in a cave in the peninsula of Sinai, an expensive proceeding; hence burglaries and an attempt to marry one of the gang to an heiress. The British Secret Service, ubiquitous from Maida Vale to Ismailia, successfully interfere, though its principal members are nearly exterminated by a sea of mud in the cave.

     The phantasmagoria is unconvincing even of its kind, but there is so much incident that the reader becomes quite excited. Judges of the High Court in England are not described by the title of “Judge”; the passages in Scots are overloaded, and there is one remarkable example of English as she should not be wrote—“Thou, Ali Beshar, will be on the road with thy car and will wireless the movements of the police. The rest of you know what thou has to do.”  (9 May 1936)

The second book was The Two Red Capsules, and the review by J[ohn] Chartres Molony (1877-1948), who wrote a couple of novels and several books on Ireland and the Irish, follows:    

    Mystery and murder are excellent ingredients in a thriller, but Mr. Lindsay is somewhat too liberal with them. Robert Laidlaw has invented a marvellous gun, and the villainous Baron Hiroshi, and the still more wicked Count Silenski (who in the end turns out to be the American Jeff Parker) are determined to obtain possession of the plans at any cost. Their opposite numbers are the Hon. Richard Monroe, who is a “Foreign Office detective,” and Inspector John Jackson, who is an unusual member of the Scotland Yard force. Before the parties are through with the business the fair face of England is littered with corpses. Count Silenski is cosmopolitan, but surely he would evoke comment in France by introducing himself as le Compte de Moreul, which seems to mean “the Moreul account.” And Frenchmen do not get into an “impassé,” a word which so spelt has no meaning at all. The Count’s Russian coadjutor might call himself Pavlovitch, but scarcely Paulvitch. In short, the book is somewhat crude. (13 June 1936)

The science fictional mechanism of The Ninth Plague may make one think of the author of A Voyage to Arcturus, but little of the remaining descriptions of the two novels will elicit such a comparison. (Oddly, though, the convoluted and pulpish plots do recall the novels of David Lindsay’s elder brother, Alexander Lindsay, who in the 1910s published several novels as “Alexander Crawford”.)

It is interesting to note that after the first three or so novels were published with the name “David Lindsay” on the title page and dust-wrapper, the author’s name was soon afterwards altered to “David T. Lindsay”—as if to create a distinction from the earlier David Lindsay.  Without seeing multiple copies of all eighteen novels by this second Lindsay, it is difficult to determine what exactly took place and when. For example, though I have observed a copy in dust-wrapper of the first book, The Ninth Plague, which has only “David Lindsay” on the title page and on the dust-wrapper, it has “David T. Lindsay” stamped on the spine of the binding.  This may represent a later issue binding, done after the middle initial was added to the byline.  Or, though it would seem odd, the full name with middle initial could have been used on the spine from the outset.  For the purpose of this note, it is not really necessary to study the entire evolution of the byline.  The central relevant point is that after some books were published as by “David Lindsay”, the middle initial was added to the byline for the bulk of the later volumes. 

Still there remained some confusion among the readers of fantasy and science fiction about the differing authorship, a point which E.F. Bleiler addressed in The Checklist of Fantastic Literature (1948). He separated the two authors, and credited “Mrs. Jacqueline Lindsay, of Sussex, England; wife of the late David Lindsay, for information which enabled us to disentangle the hitherto confused David Lindsay’s”  (p. xv).  But even Bleiler’s evidence didn’t satisfy everyone.  R. G. Medhurst (1920-1971) was a noted British collector of fantasy, as well as a writer on parapsychology and a member of the Society for Psychical Research.  In a column “The Antiquarian Bookshelf” in the June 1951 issue of Fantasy Advertiser, Medhurst wrote:

I don’t feel so happy about the David Lindsay position as [the] Checklist appears to be. Bleiler segregates two Lindsays, one responsible for the remarkable series of novels from A Voyage to Arcturus to Devil’s Tor and the other, called “David T. Lindsay”, for the series of air adventures and thrillers published by Hamilton of London.  This appears to be on the authority of Mrs. Jacqueline Lindsay, widow, presumably, of the first David Lindsay. . . .  There certainly seems no internal evidence of style or characterization to suggest that two men were involved. Though the subject matter of the two series of books is very different, I had no doubt when I read, for example, The Ninth Plague, that this was written in fact by the original David Lindsay.  I wonder whether it should be surprising, supposing that only one David Lindsay produced all these books, that his wife would suggest the contrary. The Hamilton novels are undoubtedly potboilers, though not without merit. The earlier series, on the other hand, remarkable productions as they were, seem to have been financial failures. It is surely possible that if an author were forced to turn out trivial works, having failed to find an audience for his important writing, he might well have conveyed to the people around him a feeling of dislike for his association with such stuff.  This is, of course, all conjecture. Perhaps in time to come we may produce more solid evidence. 

Medhurst was completely wrong, of course, as later scholarship on the first David Lindsay has shown that he spent the decade following the publication of Devil’s Tor obsessively writing and re-writing a remarkable novel titled The Witch, before finally retiring from authorship around 1942. Until now, nothing at all has been written about David T. Lindsay and his corpus. 

All eighteen novels were published by the London publisher John Hamilton, which was founded in 1925 and run by Charles H. Daniels, and Mary F. Daniels.  The Authors, Playwrights & Composers Handbook for 1935, edited by D. Kilham Roberts, describes them as “publishers concentrating on books concerned in any way with aviation and aeronautics, also cookery books and some general fiction (especially thrillers)” (p. 194). The firm was liquidated in 1941.  But David T. Lindsay’s novels can be seen to fit very well in their list.  Nine of his novels are part of the publisher’s “Ace Series” of aviation thrillers.  The Ninth Plague is part of “The Sundial Mystery and Adventure Library”. His first two novels, noted above, have a recurring character, the Honourable Richard (“Dick”) Monroe of the Secret Service, and The Two Red Capsules additionally introduces the reader to Inspector Jackson—the gloomy Chief Inspector John Jay Jackson of Scotland Yard, known also as “Jailbird” Jackson, who would feature in four other novels.  The overwhelming bulk of David T. Lindsay’s novels are mysteries in some form, and it is not at all surprising to find seventeen of the books listed in Allen J. Hubin’s Crime Fiction, 1749-1980: A Comprehensive Bibliography (1984), the only title missing being Lindsay’s western, Vengeance Rides North (1939). 

E.F. Bleiler lists three of David T. Lindsay’s titles in The Checklist of Fantastic Literature as having elements of fantasy or science fiction: Air Bandits (1937), The Green Ray (1937), and The Ninth Plague (1936),   R. Reginald’s Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Checklist 1700-1974 (1979) lists two of the above books, dropping The Air Bandits. Other David T. Lindsay books certainly have slight elements of fantasy, albeit some are rationalized as with the “ghosts’ in Inspector Jackson Investigates (1936).  The Green Ray is definitely science fiction, for it concerns a green ray which, when used, causes engines to stall. Thus Thomas Fenton, conspiring with various shipping magnates, uses the green ray on large airplanes, causing them to crash or become lost at sea, all in an attempt to convince the public that planes are not safe. Fenton additionally has nefarious plans of his own, which Julian Grey, of the family-run Airways Ltd., together with his old friend Jimmy Travers, now in the Secret Service, must thwart. 

Virtually nothing is known of the author, and various booksellers have suggested that the “David T. Lindsay” byline might be a house pseudonym.  Evidence against this is found in my copy of Inspector Jackson Investigates, which is inscribed on the front free endpaper “Author’s Copy / David Lindsay / Cellardyke / October 1936”.  This would seem to situate the author in Cellardyke, a village in Fife, Scotland, just to the east of Anstruther. Presuming he was a real person, it seems odd that he would publish eighteen novels and abruptly disappear without a trace. If anyone reading this can supply any further details about this David T. Lindsay, I would be grateful to hear from them. 

A full chronological list of David T. Lindsay’s books is given below, with brief notes on series and recurring characters. All titles were published by John Hamilton of London.

The Ninth Plague  [March 1936]
            Part of The Sundial Mystery and Adventure Library. Richard Monroe.

The Two Red Capsules [May 1936] 

            Richard Monroe; Inspector Jackson

Wings over Africa [July 1936]  Ace Series

Inspector Jackson Investigates [September 1936] 

            Inspector Jackson

Air Bandits [February 1937]  Ace Series

Masked Judgment [March 1937]  Ace Series

The Black Fetish [May 1937]

The Flying Crusader [May 1937]  Ace Series

The Green Ray  [July 1937]  Ace Series 

Wings over the Amazon [November 1937]  Ace Series 

Another Case for Inspector Jackson [January 1938]   

            Inspector Jackson

The Flying Armada [April 1938]  Ace Series

The Temple of the Flaming God [May 1938]  Ace Series 

The Man Nobody Knew [September 1938]

            Inspector Jackson

Inspector Jackson Goes North [February 1939] 

            Inspector Jackson

Vengeance Rides North [May 1939]

Stranglehold [September 1939]  Ace Series

Mystery of the Tumbling V  [January 1940]

Colin de la Mare

Colin de la Mare (b. reg. Bromley, Kent, 10 January 1906; d. reg. Horsham, West Sussex, 16 April 1983)

Colin Francis de la Mare was the youngest of the four children of writer and poet Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) and his wife Elfrida, née Ingpen (1860-1943), who were married on 4 August 1899.  Colin’s older brother was Richard de la Mare (1901-1986), for many years a publishing executive at the firm Faber & Faber. Colin also had two sisters, Florence (b. 1900) and Lucy Elfrida, who was known as “Jinnie”, (b. 1903). Colin married Lilias Awdry (b. 1916) in 1941.  They had one daughter Julia de la Mare (b. 1943).

Colin de la Mare (right) with his parents in the early 1930s

Colin de la Mare published only one book, They Walk Again: An Anthology of Ghost Stories (1931). Containing eighteen tales, it is a fine collection with a number of classics, including Richard Middleton’s “The Ghost Ship,” Edith Wharton’s “Afterward,” William Hope Hodgson’s “The Voice in the Night,” Oliver Onions’s “The Beckoning Fair One,” W. W. Jacobs’s “The Monkey’s Paw,” and J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Green Tea”—along with less familiar tales by top-shelf writers such as Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, Ambrose Bierce, E. F. Benson, and M. R. James, among others.  That this volume was a kind of family affair is signaled first by the inclusion of two items by the compiler’s father, one story (“All Hallows”) as well as a twenty-two page “Introduction.”  The book was published by Faber & Faber, where the compiler’s brother, Richard, was even then a leading executive.  Colin de la Mare’s only prose contribution to the book is a short “Note,” mostly comprised of acknowledgements, but observing at the beginning that “the precise definition of a ghost story is almost as elusive as a ghost itself. But it is elastic enough, I think, to warrant the inclusion of certain examples only just over the border-line.”  Though this was his only publication, Colin de la Mare remained active in the literary world, working (according to his nephew Giles de la Mare) for many years as a colleague of Jack Morpurgo (1918-2000), who held various offices in the National Book League from 1955-87.

Historically this anthology has special significance because it began the revival of interest in the works of William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918).  American bibliophile H.C. Koenig (1893-1959) read Hodgson’s tale in this volume and thereafter sought out all of Hodgson’s first editions, which he generously circulated throughout the 1930s and 1940s amongst his correspondents, including H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, Fritz Leiber, and others.  He brought Hodgson to the attention of a number of editors, including Mary Gnaedinger (who reprinted Hodgson in Famous Fantastic Mysteries) and Ellery Queen (who selected Carnacki, the Ghost Finder as part of Queen’s Quorum, an annotated listing, first published in 1948,  of the most important detective and crime fiction books).  Koenig befriended Hodgson’s sister, and assisted August Derleth on the Arkham House editions, writing the introduction to The House on the Borderlands and Other Novels (1946), and supplying Derleth with unpublished Hodgson manuscripts (including the Carnacki story “The Hog”)  that he received from Hodgson’s sister.  The growth of Hodgson’s posthumous reputation owes much to the seed planted by the reprinting of his one story in They Walk Again.

The 1942 Dutton reprint

A few final bibliographical notes. The Faber & Faber edition was published in April 1931, followed in October by the Dutton edition in the United States. The 1942 Dutton reprint adds a two page “Foreword” by longtime Yale English professor William Lyon Phelps.  Later Faber & Faber reprints were retitled The Ghost Book: or, They Walk Again.  In April-May 1956, the National Book League in London held an exhibition of Walter de la Mare’s books and manuscripts.  Item no. 21 was Walter de la Mare’s own copy of the first edition of They Walk Again, inscribed by Colin de la Mare to his father, with “copious notes and corrections in ink to the introduction” made by the writer himself. These notes, wherever they might be today, would make for fascinating reading. 

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

Oscar Cook

Oscar Cook (b. Tollington Park, Islington, 17 March 1888; d. Kensington, 23 February 1952)

Richard Martin Oscar Cook, who commonly went by his third name Oscar, was born in greater London, the second son of Henry Adcock Cook (b. 1858), an athletic goods manufacturer, and Alice Cole (b. c. 1861), who were married in the Parish of St. James, Muswell Hill, Middlesex on 30 October 1885. Besides an older brother he had a younger sister.  Little is known of his youth and early adulthood, but he was educated at St. Catherine’s School and the family lived for a time in Broxbourne. At the time of the 1911 Census, Oscar was working as an insurance clerk in Broxbourne. By June 1912, he was nine thousand miles away from home in Borneo, where, finding himself out of a job after a disagreement with his employer at the Beaufort Borneo Rubber Company, he joined the North Borneo Civil Service, in whose employ he remained for about eight years, returning to London in 1920.  Back in England he was encouraged by friends to write a personal memoir of his time in Borneo, and when completed, he took his manuscript to the literary agency Curtis Brown.  There he met agent Christine Campbell Thomson (1897-1985).  Thomson gave his manuscript a more attractive title and proceeded to sell it to British and American publishers.  Borneo: The Stealer of Hearts was published in London by Hurst & Blackett in August 1924, and soon afterwards by Houghton Mifflin of Boston.  Following Thomson’s recommendation that he write about what he knew, Cook published a number of stories set in Borneo in magazines such The Blue Magazine, Hutchinson’s Adventure-Story Magazine, Hutchinson’s Mystery-Story Magazine, and The Novel Magazine.

Oscar Cook and Christine Campbell Thomson were married in London on 30 September 1924. Around this time, for about a year, Cook worked as the editor of two magazines, Hutchinson’s Mystery-Story Magazine and Hutchinson’s Adventure-Story Magazine.  In 1925 Cook acquired a controlling interest in the publishing firm Selwyn & Blount Limited. His wife devised and edited for the firm the very successful “Not at Night” series of horror anthologies, the first of which, titled “Not at Night,” appeared in October 1925.  Less successful on the Selwyn & Blount list were Cook’s own novel The Seventh Wave, published in September 1926, and a reprint of his memoir, Borneo: The Stealer of Hearts, in August 1927. Cook tried his hand at playwriting, and a version in three acts of The Seventh Wave was performed in 1927. 

Selwyn & Blount also published his wife’s novel, His Excellency, in September 1927.  The “Not at Night” series meanwhile had grown by two further volumes, More Not at Night in September 1926 and You’ll Need a Night Light in September 1927, but the success of this series was not enough to keep the firm alive.  In 1928 Selwyn & Blount was acquired by Hutchinson, which continued the profitable “Not at Night” series, making in total twelve volumes, the final being the Not at Night Omnibus (1937).  Thomson continued to edit the series, including tales of her own (under the pseudonym Flavia Richardson) as well as stories by her husband.

In 1928 Cook and Thomson’s only child was born, a son Gervis Hugh Frere Cook, who in adulthood became a navy officer and hyphenated his surname as Frere-Cook.  In the family tradition, Gervis Frere-Cook edited a few books in the 1960s and early 1970s, including The Decorative Arts of the Mariner (1966) and The Decorative Arts of the Christian Church (1972), before his early death in 1974.

Beginning in 1925, Thomson sold American serial rights for four of Cook’s stories to Weird Tales magazine, and these stories were mostly reprints (sometimes under new titles) of tales which had previously appeared in England.  (One Weird Tales story which appears in various indices as by Oscar Cook is actually bylined “Cargray Cook” and is mistakenly included with those by Oscar Cook. This story, titled “On the Highway,” appeared in the January 1925 issue.)  The story which appeared under the title “The Sacred Jars” in Weird Tales in March 1927, and which appeared in England as “When Glister Walked,” is actually an expansion of an episode which had appeared in chapter six of his memoir.  Cook’s best stories are those which are highlighted by the local color of Borneo.  His most famous story is probably “Boomerang,” which was effectively adapted by Rod Serling for a second season episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, where it was retitled “The Caterpillar.” The episode was broadcast on 1 March 1972.

Cook and Thomson’s marriage broke up in 1937, and Oscar Cook died in Kensington at the age of 63 in early 1952. 

NB: An earlier version of this entry appeared in my column “Notes on Neglected Fantasists”, Fastitocalon no. 1 (2010).  

Julian Kilman

Julian Kilman (b. Drummondsville, Ontario, 26 March 1878; d. Gulfport, Florida, 3 April 1954)

Julian Kilman was the pen-name of Leroy Noble Kilman, the elder of the two children of Alva Hamilton Kilman (1853-1916) and his wife Ida M. Kilman (1859-1920s?), née Noble.  His sister was Zella May Kilman (1880-1955).

Kilman immigrated to the United States around 1897, afterwards becoming a U.S. citizen.  He studied at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and received an A.B. in 1905 and a LL.B. in 1906, after which he was admitted to the bar.  Settling in Buffalo, he was from 1908-1914 an assistant government attorney for the Western District of New York, moving over to the Bureau of Naturalization in 1914 and becoming the District Director of Naturalization in 1925, a position he held until his retirement. 

On 26 July 1910, at Milan, Michigan, he married Cecile Lily Gauntlett (1883-1962). They had two children, Katherine (born circa 1913) and Julian (1915-1990).  Soon after his marriage he began to contribute short stories to magazines, and the bulk of them so far discovered appeared between 1921 and 1930, all with the byline “Julian” Kilman. With his proficiency at the short story, he at times lectured on story writing at the University of Buffalo.

Kilman published six stories in The Black Mask, beginning with “The Peculiar Affair at the Axminster” in the first issue dated April 1920.  More significantly, he published five stories in Weird Tales, also beginning in its very first issue dated March 1923, with “The Mystery of Black Jean”.  Kilman’s stories appeared in the first four issues, and in the sixth, all published in 1923.  The longest tale, “The Golden Caverns” (May 1923), is a lost treasure story set in Brazil, while “The Affair of the Man in Scarlet” concerns an execution in thirteenth century France.  The three other stories are all about murders and crimes.  Marvin Kaye, in The Best of Weird Tales 1923 (1997), considered three of Kilman’s five Weird Tales stories to be among the top works of fiction published in the first year of that magazine’s existence.  However, as well-written and executed as these stories are, the simple truth is that there is very little of the fantastic in them, and as little horror. It seems probable that as Weird Tales found its own niche, Kilman drifted away from being a contributor simply because his work was never a good fit in the first place and because his interests lay elsewhere. 

Over fifty short stories by Kilman are known, but he never published a collection, nor indeed any books at all.  Magazines he contributed to include Midnight Mystery Stories, The Smart Set, Action Stories, Mystery Magazine, Detective Tales, Tropical Adventures, Real Detective Tales, People’s Story Magazine, Brief Stories, The Double Dealer, The American Short Story, 10 Story Book, and others. After 1930 Kilman’s output ceased, save perhaps for a couple of nonfiction pieces in Argosy in 1946 that are bylined “L.N. Kilman”.  Kilman was known also to be an ardent amateur lepidopterist.  He died in Florida, but was buried in Milan, Michigan.  

John Guinan

John Guinan (b. Ballindown, near Birr, County Offaly, Ireland, 20 May 1874; d. Sutton, Dublin, Ireland, 7 March 1945)

John Guinan was an Irish playwright and civil servant who wrote four plays for the Abbey Theatre, “The Cuckoo's Nest” (1913), “The Plough Lifters” (1916), “Black Oliver” (1927), and “The Rune of Healing” (1931). He also wrote short stories for Irish newspapers, but these were never collected.  His story "The Watcher o' the Dead" (Cornhill Magazine, June 1929), concerning a curious custom associated with the cemetery Gort na Marbh, was reprinted by Montague Summers in The Supernatural Omnibus (1931), and thus Guinan rates mention here. One other folklorish and borderline weird story is “The Scythe Bearer” (Blackwood’s Magazine, November 1933).  His books include his first play, The Cuckoo’s Nest: A Comedy in Three Acts (1933), an Irish edition of “Black Oliver” as Oilibhéar Dubh: Cluiche aon Ghníomh (1935), and the posthumous The Wonderful Wedding: A  Play in Three Acts (written between 1906 and 1908, but not published until 1978), written in collaboration with George Fitzmaurice (1877-1963). 

Virginia Swain

Virginia Swain (b. Kansas City, Missouri, 13 February 1899; d. New Milford, Connecticut, 7 April 1968) 

Virginia Maude Swain was the only child of Raymond Swain (b. 1870), a cattle salesman, and his wife, Laura Belle Rodgers (b. 1875), who were married around 1895. She was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, where she attended the Central High School. Virginia Swain was briefly married to a man surnamed Jewell, but they were divorced in 1920. She studied journalism at the University of Missouri, achieving a bachelor’s degree in 1923.

From 1923-1925 she work as a reporter and feature writer on The Des Moines Register.  There she met Phil Stong (1899-1957), who was on the editorial staff.  They were married in Cleveland, Ohio, on 8 November 1925.  They had no children. The couple soon moved to New York, where beginning in 1927 Virginia worked on the staff of McClure’s Magazine, writing a number of features. Later she worked in the editorial department of The Saturday Evening Post. 

 

Her first novel was Linda (1928), a murder mystery about a young girl at college.  This was followed by a second novel, Foolish Fire (1929), and a quiz book, compiled with Harold Matson, Name Your 10—and Count your Points:  Match Yourself against Experts (1932). 

The success of her husband’s first published novel, State Farm (1932), and the popular film of it released the next year, allowed the Stongs to buy three hundred and twenty acres of the Iowa farm that had formerly belonged to Phil Stong’s grandfather.  The couple settled in Washington, Connecticut, but managed the Iowa farm from Connecticut. 

Swain’s next novel was a fantasy. It was accepted by the publisher Farrar & Rinehart, who held a contest to find a title for the book, issuing some galleys that called special attention to the $25 prize money for the best title.  The novel was published in February 1938 as The Hollow Skin, the winning title submitted by Ruth Bernhard.  The Hollow Skin is a bizarre story, lightly written but with very deft touches of characterization and an engaging narrative.  It tells the story of a young Albany medical doctor, Lex Drummond, who after being spurned by his lover and suffering from bronchitis seeks recuperation by means of a visit to his uncle, Dr. Simeon Stuart, in the Bahamas.  (Swain did visit the Bahamas at least twice, in 1928 and 1930, and these visits doubtless contributed local color to her novel’s setting.)  Here Drummond becomes enamored with a young woman named Valentine, who arrived on the same boat as Drummond and who is the ward of the mysterious and unpleasant Percy Isher.  Strange deaths happen at the Isher residence, and before reaching its end (I do not wish here to spoil the strange dénouement concerning Percy Isher) the novel turns from being one primarily of romance and detection to being one of horror. 

Swain published infrequent short stories, one a weird tale, “Aunt Cassie”, which appeared in her husband’s idiosyncratic anthology of weird and fantastic fiction, The Other Worlds (1941).  While her husband praised the story as being original, it is one of those clichéd stories wherein the reader figures out the inevitable ending long before the characters in the story reach it.  

Swain’s final novel, and her final book The Dollar Gold Piece (1942), was first serialized in abridged form in The Woman’s Home Companion (August through October 1942) before appearing in full in hardcover.  It is a novel of the pioneers of Kansas City in the boom year of 1887.  

As Swain’s own literary career stalled, her husband’s success continued.  In addition to many successful novels (some of which, like State Fair, were made into films), Stong published a large number of popular children’s books.  In 1957 he died suddenly of a heart attack in the workroom of their home in Connecticut.  Swain took over the long-distance management of her late husband’s Iowa farm, outliving him by eleven years. She died in a Connecticut hospital at the age of 69, leaving behind the nearly-complete manuscript of her final work, The Farm House Cook Book, which remained unpublished. 

NB: John Norris has also written on The Hollow Skin at his Pretty Sinister Books blog.