- An Old Fashioned Woman of Hayward, California, a discerning reader with a good memory who noticed the similarity of:
"The Invisible Terror" by Hugh Thomason (dates unknown) in Weird Tales, June 1923, to "The Damned Thing" by Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), which was reprinted in Weird Tales in September 1923;
"The Gray Death" by Loual B. Sugarman (1894-1965) in Weird Tales, June 1923, to "The Silver Menace" by Murray Leinster (1896-1975) in The Thrill Book, September 1 and September 15, 1919; and
"Penelope" by Vincent Starrett (1886-1974) in Weird Tales, May 1923, to "Phoebe" by O. Henry (1862-1910) in Everybody's Magazine, November 1907.
- J. L. of Jersey City, New Jersey.
- Richard P. "Dick" Tooker (1902-1988) of Minneapolis, Minnesota, who, like Lovecraft, had his second letter in two months and would have more--plus a short story--in future issues.
- Joel Shoemaker (1862-1937) of Seattle, Washington. Called "Reverend," he was an Indian fighter, newspaperman, politician, public speaker, and conservationist. A month after his letter was published, Shoemaker got into a tussle with Morris S. Brown, Seattle's "tallest policeman," who was trying to kidnap Shoemaker's three-year-old grandson, Billings Brown. Shoemaker's daughter, Mrs. Nannie S. Brown, fired a pistol at her ex-husband, while Joel Shoemaker "belabored his victim with an old hickory cane he has carried for 30 or 40 years." Brown should have known better than to mess with an old Kentuckian carrying a hickory cane, or with that old Kentuckian's wife, Luella Billings Shoemaker, who "rushed" the pistol to her daughter, ready for the firing. You can read all about it in "Brown Facing Prison Term" in the Seattle Star, November 28, 1923, page 3.
- Lee Torpie of San Francisco, California.
- Dr. Henry C. Murphy (1862-1932) of Brooklyn, New York. He was a long-practicing medical doctor whose father was also a medical doctor. In response to his letter, editor Edwin M. Baird wrote:
The foregoing was written by Dr. Henry C. Murphy of Brooklyn; and, before we comment upon it, we rise to remark that WEIRD TALES seems to offer a special appeal to physicians and surgeons. They like to read our sort of stories, and they like to write 'em. There is scarcely a day that we don't get at least one weird story written by a doctor. Doctors, it seems, encounter some weird adventures.
I have written before about medical doctors. Very often, my writing about doctors has gone along with my writing about psychopaths and serial killers. Click on the menu items on the right to read more.
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| H.P. Lovecraft started out the year 1923 with the publication of his serialized novelette "The Lurking Fear" in the magazine Home Brew. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database lists nine issues of Home Brew, five published in 1922 and four in 1923. "The Lurking Fear" ran in all four of the issues for 1923, from January through April. I wondered the other day whether "Dagon" was Lovecraft's first illustrated story in a national magazine. I guess it depends on what you think of as a national magazine, but "The Lurking Fear" in Home Brew was also illustrated, by Clark Ashton Smith of all people. Home Brew was edited and published in New York by George Julian Houtain (1884-1945) and his second wife, Elsie Dorothy (Grant) McLaughlin Houtain (1889-?). They were members of the National Amateur Press Association (NAPA), and she served as the second female president of the organization. I have always thought of Home Brew as an amateur publication and, as such, not a national magazine. On the other hand, "America's Zippiest Pocket Magazine" was available as far west as Cincinnati. I have read a reference to Home Brew that it was discontinued in 1924. Lovecraft was published in its pages in 1922-1923. Weird Tales must have come along at just the right time for him. "The Lurking Fear," by the way, was reprinted in Weird Tales in June 1928. Note the blurb on the cover regarding CAS: "the Artist Who Illustrated Edgar Allan Poe." |
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