Katherine Metcalf Roof (1871-?)

Author, Poet, Playwright, Biographer

Born March 31, 1871, Clifton Springs, New York

Died ?

Pulp magazines rose and many older and more respectable titles fell in the years following World War I. The Great Depression was partly to blame. Paper shortages during World War II finished off many of the titles that had survived the 1930s. Writers who once saw their work printed in fine magazines such as Scribner's, The Century, and The Smart Set had to be satisfied in later years with writing for the pulps. Katherine Metcalf Roof was one of them. She was born on March 31, 1871, in Clifton Springs, New York, and began writing for magazines as early as 1902. Ainslee's, The Century, The Craftsman, Harper's, Metropolitan, The Smart Set, Woman's Home Companion, and Women's Stories were among the magazines that published her work. In December 1907, she had a ghost story, "The Edge of a Dream," in The Smart Set. Her books included The Stranger at the Hearth (novel, 1916); The Life and Art of William Merritt Chase (non-fiction, 1917), a biography of her friend, the renowned painter and teacher from Indiana, William Merritt Chase (1849-1916); Colonel William Smith and Lady (non-fiction, 1929); and Murder on the Salem Road (novel, 1931). She also wrote plays, including Three Dear Friends. Pulp magazines that printed Katherine's work included Ghost Stories, Romance, Snappy Stories, Street and Smith's Detective Story Magazine, and of course Weird Tales. Katherine's lone story for "The Unique Magazine" was "A Million Years After," which made the cover of the November 1930 issue. (That was the same year coincidentally in which The Century and The Smart Set gave up the ghost.) She ended the decade with a letter to Strange Stories in December 1939. 

Dinosaurs were in the air when "A Million Years After" appeared. Brought to the silver screen in the 1910s by moviemaker Willis O'Brien (through stop-motion photography) and cartoonist Winsor McCay (through hand-drawn animation), dinosaurs had been in the public eye for some time when the silent film The Lost World was released in 1925. Based on Arthur Conan Doyle's book, the film featured advancements in Willis' techniques and proved a smash hit. Soon dinosaurs appeared on the covers of popular magazines, including Amazing Stories in June 1926 and February 1929. Weird Tales got in on the act with Katherine Metcalf Roof's story, illustrated by Curtis C. Senf on the cover and in the interior. Robert Weinberg considered it a mediocre tale, while Donald F. Glut was kinder, describing it as a "whimsical story" involving the theft and inadvertent incubation of a brontosaurus egg by two burglars. After going on a rampage, the poor dinosaur meets the same fate as rampaging dinosaurs everywhere. Incidentally, less than three years after "A Million Years After" was published, the moviegoing public flocked to the nation's theaters to see a film that was then and is still a sensation--King Kong.

Katherine Metcalf Roof lost both of her parents, Dr. Francis Harvey Roof and Mary Metcalf (Stocking) Roof, within three months of each other in 1916-1917. The date and place of her own death are unknown, even after these many years. She was a traveler, though, and made several trips to Europe in the 1920s and '30s. Her last known published story was in 1943 (she had two poems published later), and I suspect that the elusive Katherine Metcalf Roof died sometime in the 1940s.

Katherine Metcalf Roof's Story in Weird Tales

"A Million Years After" (Nov. 1930)

Further Reading

Some of Katherine Metcalf Roof's early work has been digitized and is available on the Internet. I don't know of any reprints of her pulp fiction.

Katherine Metcalf Roof's "Million Years After" landed her a spot on the cover of Weird Tales in November 1930. The art was by C.C. Senf.

Note: Although Katherine Metcalf Roof listed her birth year as 1881 in an application for a passport, Randal A. Everts has found her in the 1880 census, aged nine. I have changed the birth year I had previously shown in this posting. Her date and place of death are still unknown. Thanks to Mr. Everts.
Updated March 31, 2019, the 148th anniversary of her birth.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley