Theodore Snow Wood (1877-1940)

Lawyer, Accountant, Secretary, Author

Born May 18, 1877, Arkansas

Died Fall 1940

Pulp magazines gave many people a chance to live double lives. Readers could escape to the big city or into the Old West, to the jungles of Africa or into lands of long-ago or never-were. Writers of pulp stories might labor away in offices or on farms by day, but at night or on weekends or in their little odd hours, they could play author. And it wasn't just play. If they were good enough, and persistent enough, and maybe lucky enough, they could see their work in print. Theodore Snow Wood may have been one of those. By day he was at various times a lawyer, a bookkeeper, an auditor, an accountant. But when he stepped out of his office and stopped by the newsstand to pick up a magazine, he would have seen his own byline there as a published author.

Theodore Snow Wood was born on May 18, 1877, in Arkansas into a family that wandered. His father, John Wood, was born in Texas. His mother, Antoinette G. Wood, nicknamed Nettie or Annie, was a native of Maine. Each census from 1870 to 1910 found the Wood family in a different place:

1870--Santa Rosa County, Florida
1880--New Orleans, Louisana
1900--Cochran, Georgia
1910--New York City

John Wood died in 1907. In 1910, his widow, Antoinette Wood, lived with her youngest son, Theodore, in New York City. The two were recorded in New York (either in Manhattan or The Bronx) in the censuses of 1910, 1915, and 1920. Antoinette Wood may very well have died in 1920 or 1921. In any case, Theodore S. Wood married a young Marcella Plint on April 3, 1921, in Manhattan. In 1930 and 1940, Wood and his family were in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, where he continued to work as an accountant.

I have found just three magazine story credits for Theodore Snow Wood:

• "That Puttun Job" in All-Story Weekly (Feb. 23, 1918)
• "Vacation Money" in Top-Notch (May 1, 1920)
• "People vs. Bland" in Weird Tales (July/Aug. 1923)

Theodore Snow Wood died in the fall of 1940. (See his son's comment below.) And that is all I know of him.

Theodore Snow Wood's Story in Weird Tales

"People vs. Bland" (July/Aug. 1923)

Further Reading

None.

Note

This posting is a revision to a previous version in which I misidentified Theodore Snow Wood's parents as Jonas Wood and Angenette G. Harwood. The comments below refer to that original version. Thanks to SOC for pointing out the error.

Revised again on November 19, 2014. Thanks to Randal A. Everts and a family member of Theodore Snow Wood for further information.

Copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley