Royal W. Jimerson (1895-1958)

Newspaperman and Author
Born September 4, 1895, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Died August 3, 1958, Redwood City, California

Royal Wade Jimerson was born on September 4, 1895, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and as a child lived in Menomonie, Wisconsin. At the time he filled out his World War I draft card, Jimerson was back in the city of his birth and working as a newspaper reporter for The Music Trades with offices in the Railway Exchange Building. At age twenty-two, he may have been a recent graduate, his alma mater being the University of Wisconsin. Jimerson was a reporter for the Minneapolis Star and the Minneapolis Tribune for five years before the papers merged. He relocated to California in 1925, joining the San Francisco Examiner as a rewrite man. Jimerson moved up to reporter on the San Francisco Chronicle in 1934 before returning to the Examiner in 1937 as financial editor. He became political editor a year later. Ill health forced Jimerson to retire in 1954. He died a month short of his sixty-third birthday, on August 3, 1958, in Redwood City, California.

Jimerson wrote just one story for Weird Tales, but it proved a popular one. Called "Medusa," it appeared in the April issue, 1928. It was reprinted in the magazine a decade later, in the May 1938 issue. It was also reprinted in By Daylight Only: 20 Stories That Keep You Awake (1929), the fifth in a series called "Not At Night," edited by Christine Campbell Thomson and published by Selwyn and Blount. The story is also mentioned in John Clute and John Grant's Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1999) under the entry "Atavism." Jimerson's name appeared in "The Unique Magazine" shortly before and after his story was published, for he wrote to "The Eyrie" in the January and May issues of 1928.

Royal W. Jimerson's Letters and Story in Weird Tales
Letter to "The Eyrie" (Jan. 1928)

"Medusa" (Apr. 1928, reprinted May 1938)

Letter to "The Eyrie" (May 1928)

Further Reading

I don't know of any further reading for Jimerson except his story and his obituary (a brief one) in the New York Times, August 4, 1958.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley