G.G. Pendarves (1885-1938)

Née Gladys Gordon Trenery
Aka Marjory E. Lambe (See the comment below.)
Author, Pianist, Music Teacher
Born January 1885, Stonycroft, Liverpool, Merseyside; or Cornwall, or West Derby, Lancashire, England
Died August 1, 1938, Sunset House, Parkgate, Cheshire, England

Five years ago, I wrote an entry called "Women Writers in Weird Tales" in which I gave some figures from Eric Leif Davin's book Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965 (2006). Among those figures is a list of the most prolific women writers of fiction in the pages of Weird Tales. Third on that list, after Allison V. Harding and Mary Elizabeth Counselman, is G.G. Pendarves. I believe that Allison V. Harding was actually a man, actually the associate editor of Weird Tales, Lamont Buchanan. If that's true, then G.G. Pendarves had the second-most stories in Weird Tales among women. And yet very little to nothing is known of her. [Update: That has changed, and so I have updated what I have written about G.G. Pendarves. My update is dated January 26, 2025. I have stricken some of what I wrote before and have removed a few other things completely.]

G.G. Pendarves was the nom de plume of Gladys Gordon Trenery. I hesitate to call it a pseudonym as it could easily have been her married name. No one seems to know. She was called a spinster in a public record of her will. If that was true about her, then Pendarves was not her married name. It is however a Cornish surname, also a place name in Cornwall. I believe the place name came first, and so the Pendarves were the people of that place. Gladys Trenery's use of the Pendarves surname may have been to tie her to a place that meant something in her life and in the lives of her family.

Gladys Trenery was the daughter of Captain John Trenery (1844-1916), a master mariner, and Elizabeth E. Blaney Phillips Trenery (1848-1927). Captain Trenery was, according to his obituary, "a prominent figure in shipping circles." (The Cornishman, Apr. 20, 1916) Among his other accomplishments and activities, he was a commodore of the fleet for the Johnstone Line. He wasn't very often counted in censuses with his family. Maybe he was at sea when the census taker came around. Captain Trenery died at home in New Brighton, in Merseyside, in April 1916.

According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, Gladys Gordon Trenery was born in Cornwall. An index of births in England and Wales gives a Gladys Gordon Trenery as having been born in Lancashire in January 1885. The 1901 Census has her living in Birkenhead, Cheshire, with a birthplace in Stonycroft, Liverpool. Later records also show a birthplace of Stonycroft. Gladys Gordon Trenery was sixteen years old in 1901 and at the time living in a large household that included Grace H. Trenery, age fifty-five, and Elizabeth B. Trenery, age fifty-three. We now know that Elizabeth B. Trenery was her mother and Grace her aunt. There were Trenerys in Cornwall to be sure. Maybe that was where the family originated before moving to Merseyside or its adjoining counties. It seems safe to assume that either Grace H. or Elizabeth B. Trenery was her mother.

Gladys Trennery had two older brothers, Walter J.P. Trennery and David N. Trennery, who emigrated to New Zealand, worked in insurance, and had a keen interest in art. His avocation was painting. Her younger sister was Grace Robartes Trenery (1886-1950). Grace R. Trenery graduated from the University of Liverpool in 1913 with a masters degree in arts. She lectured in literature at the university for many years before being appointed warden of women students at the University College of North Wales in 1943. She also edited the Arden annotated edition of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, published in April 1924, 360 years to the month after the great playwright's birth.

Gladys Gordon Trenery attended Wallasey High School in Merseyside. At Christmastime 1907, she passed her examination to become a teacher in the playing of pianoforte, this at the Royal Academy of Music. She would then have been just short of her twenty-third birthday. Writing as G.G. Pendarves, she had her first known published story, "The Kabbalist," in Hutchinson's Mystery Story Magazine in November 1923. Eight more followed in that magazine over the next two years. She broke into the pages of Weird Tales magazine in August 1926 with "The Devil's Graveyard."

G.G. Pendarves contributed "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow" to The Horn Book for November 1931. Otherwise, all of her known stories in the period 1926 to 1939 were in Argosy All-Story Magazine, The Magic Carpet Magazine, Oriental Stories, and Weird Tales. Her last three stories in "The Unique Magazine" were published posthumously, for Gladys G. Trenery died on August 1, 1938. That sad event is lost among the deaths of Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft during the previous two years.

Gladys traveled to the United States in April 1927, April 1930, and November 1932. At least two of those visits were with her cousin, Christine (Bickle) Banbury, or Mrs. Fernley H. Banbury, who lived in Connecticut. Fernley Hope Banbury (1881-1963) was an engineer and inventor. He graduated from Purdue University in 1906 and worked for the Farrell Corporation in Ansonia, Connecticut. When Gladys Trenery traveled in November 1932, she gave an address of 15 Linnet Lane in Liverpool, a fitting name for a musician, for a linnet is a songbird of Britain and Europe. If her house was the same house with that address today, then I find it a charming brick house set away from the street.

Gladys Gordon Trennery died on August 1, 1938, at Sunset House, Parkgate, Cheshire, England. She was buried two days later at Rake Lane Cemetery in Wallasey, Merseyside. Incredibly, author Ramsey Campbell, who was born in Liverpool on January 4, 1946, had a neighbor named Gladys Trenery. She looked after him when his mother was taken to the hospital after cutting her hand on broken glass. You can read about that event in "An Interview with Ramsey Campbell" from July 23, 2013, here. That makes me wonder whether the death date of G.G. Pendarves is correct or if the name Galdys Trenery was really common enough for it to have been given to one teller of weird tales and to the babysitter of another. Update: As it turns out, her death date is correct. See the note, marked with an asterisk *, below.

G.G. Pendarves' Stories in Oriental Stories, The Magic Carpet Magazine, and Weird Tales (plus one from Argosy All-Story Magazine)
Note: All are from Weird Tales unless otherwise noted.
"The Devil's Graveyard" (Aug. 1926)
"The Return" (Apr. 1927)
"The Power of the Dog" (Aug. 1927)
"The Lord of the Tarn" (Nov. 1927)
"The Eighth Green Man" (Mar. 1928; reprinted Jan. 1937 and May 1952)
"The Ruler of Zem-Zem" in Argosy All-Story Weekly (Apr. 28, 1928)
"The Doomed Treveans" (May 1928)
"The Laughing Thing" (May 1929)
"The Grave at Goonhilly" (Oct. 1930; reprinted Mar. 1954)
"The Footprint" (May 1930)
"The Black Camel" in Oriental Stories (Oct./Nov. 1930)
"The Veiled Leopard" in Oriental Stories (Dec. 1930/Jan. 1931)
"The Secret Trail" in Oriental Stories (Feb./Mar. 1931)
"Thirty Pieces of Silver" in Oriental Stories (Summer 1931)
"El Hamel, the Lost One" in Oriental Stories (Winter 1932)
"From the Dark Halls of Hell" (Jan. 1932)
"The Djinnee of El Sheyb" in Oriental Stories (Spring 1932)
"The Altar of Melek Taos" (Sept. 1932)
"Abd Dhulma, Lord of Fire (Dec. 1933)
"Passport to the Desert" in The Magic Carpet Magazine (Jan. 1934)
"Werewolf of the Sahara" (Aug./Sept. 1936)
"The Dark Star" (Mar. 1937)
"The Whistling Corpse" (July 1937)
"Thing of Darkness" (Aug. 1937; reprinted Nov. 1953)
"The Black Monk" (Oct. 1938)
"The Sin-Eater" (Dec. 1938; reprinted Sept. 1952 and July 1954)
"The Withered Heart (Nov. 1939)

Further Reading

Look for reprints of G.G. Pendarves' stories in various anthologies and reprint editions, including in The Eighth Green Man (and Other Strange Folk) (1989). The title story was one of only five stories reprinted twice in Weird Tales. "The Sin-Eater," also by G.G Pendarves, was another.

*Revision (Oct. 17, 2017): The death date for Gladys Gordon Trenery as given here is in fact correct. I have from R. Alain Everts a document that confirms it. Thanks to RAE.

Updated on January 26, 2025.

Thanks also to The FictionMags Index and to commenters below.

Text copyright 2016, 2023, 2025 Terence E. Hanley