I have thought that stories by Allison V. Harding published in Weird Tales were actually the work of Lamont Buchanan, associate editor of the magazine, writing under a pseudonym. That's based on my reading of the Harding stories--at least some of them--as the work of a man rather than of a woman. According to Sam Moskowitz in his examination of the original Weird Tales files, Allison V. Harding was the pseudonym of Jean Milligan. That's based on the assumption that because payment for the stories was sent to Jean Milligan, she was their author. A third possibility is that Buchanan and his future wife collaborated on the stories. Now I have a fourth possibility, that Jean Milligan was acting as a literary agent or representative for Lamont Buchanan. I don't have any evidence to back that up. It's only a supposition.
I'm not sure that anyone knows when, where, or how Lamont Buchanan and Jean Milligan met. They are supposed to have known each other in New Canaan, Connecticut, where Jean Milligan went to high school. (A newspaper article from 2017 calls them "high school sweethearts.") Both were born in 1919. Both would seemingly have graduated from high school in the same year, 1937, though Jean Milligan, having been born on May 31, may have been in the class of 1938. Lamont Buchanan was older than she by almost three months (he was born on March 6) and would have celebrated his eighteenth birthday during the 1936-1937 school year, when he would presumably have been a senior.
I have found a city directory for 1938 for Stamford, Connecticut. Here is a transcription of the original entries for all of the Buchanans listed in that directory:
Buchanan Charles L Mrs h Weed n Wahackme rd
--Claire F wid Paul 137 South ave
--Lamont student r off Weed n Wahackme rd
I take that to mean that Lamont Buchanan, son of Mrs. Charles L. Buchanan, was a student with a rear office (?) either on Weed Street (a north-south street) or Wahackme Road (an east-west road), which intersects Weed Street just to the northwest of New Canaan. At the time, the Milligan family was living on Richmond Hill Road, which is less than a mile to the south, also an intersecting road with Weed Street. Unfortunately, Jean Milligan was not listed with her parents. Perhaps she was still in high school in 1938. Or maybe she was away at college.
Jean Milligan's mother, Beatrice Isabel (Humphrey) Milligan, died on November 10, 1938, at age fifty-three. On May 19, 1939, Jean returned to New York from a trip overseas, most recently (or maybe it was her only destination) from Bermuda. She was nineteen years old. There are so many things now that we will never know. But did Jean travel away from the place of her recent loss?
On May 12, 1940, Jean Milligan was enumerated in the Federal census with her father, John R. Milligan, at 81 Richmond Hill Road in Fairfield County. She was twenty and working as a secretary. Unfortunately, I can't read the next piece of information, the industry in which she worked. You can try to turn it into "Law office" if you want, but I don't think that's what it says. It looks more like "Tell office," perhaps signifying a teller's office. She was in her third year of college. The Darien, Connecticut, city directory for 1940 also has an entry for her at 81 Richmond Hill Road. It even has her mother's name and death date. Jean then was a student. I suspect the directory was published before the census was made, in which case Jean Milligan may have been in college until late 1939 or early 1940, when she began working as a secretary. This is assuming she didn't work and attend classes at the same time.
Meanwhile, Lamont Buchanan was living with his mother, Anne Buchanan, at 227 57th Street in Manhattan. They were enumerated there on April 3, 1940. Like Jean Milligan, he was in his third year of college. It's interesting to see that several artists and at least one magazine editor, Paul R. Milton of The Dance Magazine of Stage and Screen, were also in residence at 227. In other words, there were connections to art and the magazine industry, also to advertising and related fields, in Buchanan's own building. We should remember that Buchanan's father, Charles L. Buchanan, was also a writer.
On October 16, 1940, Lamont Buchanan registered for the draft. He was living at the same address as before, but now we find out that he was a student at Columbia University. His father was then living at 853 7th Avenue, New York, New York. At five feet, eleven inches tall and only 135 pounds, Lamont Buchanan must have been rail thin. And by the way, he had brown hair, brown eyes, and a light complexion.
There were developments at Weird Tales magazine in 1940, too. Farnsworth Wright was last credited as editor in the issue of March 1940. In the next issue, May 1940, Dorothy McIlwraith assumed the helm. Her associate was Harry Aveline Perkins, another of a cohort born in 1919. His birthday was April 22. According to Douglas A. Anderson on his blog, Lesser-Known Writers, Perkins remained as associate editor of Weird Tales until September 1942. Curiously, the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb) does not have entries either for Harry Aveline Perkins or for Lamont Buchanan. ISFDb does however have an entry for Jean Milligan as Allison V. Harding. Lamont Buchanan became associate editor of Weird Tales with the November issue of 1942. Seven months later, in July 1943, the first Harding story, "The Unfriendly World," appeared. Thirty-five more followed. The last was "Scope," in January 1951.
By 1942 when Buchanan started with Weird Tales, the magazine was already on a bimonthly schedule. Only three issues intervened between his arrival on staff and the publication of the first Harding story. It's probably safe to assume that the lineup for at least a couple of issues was already set by the time Buchanan started. If that's the case, then a story by Allison V. Harding appeared in one of the very first issues available to her. A curious coincidence. Can we say that Buchanan actually guided that story into print? Can we say also that he may have been biased in doing so? If so, what was the source of his bias? Did he act in favor of a woman whom he had presumably known for several years but who was not known to have been a writer or editor under her own name, then or ever? Or was it in his own favor, Buchanan the current associate editor and current or future published writer?
So Jean Milligan attended college. Whether she graduated or not, I can't say. She worked as a secretary. Her father, John R. Milligan, was an investment counselor in his own firm, Van Cleef, Jordan, & Wood, with offices at 14 Wall Street in Manhattan. He was in a position to employ her in his own office or to secure employment for her in another. Sam Moskowitz said or assumed that Jean Milligan was an attorney in New York during the 1940s. She received payments for the Harding stories at a law firm. But, again, just because she received payments doesn't mean she was the author, and just because she received them at an attorney's office doesn't mean she was an attorney. I think it safer to assume that she was the author of the Harding stories than that she was an attorney, but what if she was receiving payment on behalf of someone else? What if she was acting as a kind of literary agent for an obviously pseudonymous author?
More assumptions. More unanswered and possibly unanswerable questions.
According to Douglas Anderson, Lamont Buchanan remained with Weird Tales until September 1949. Allison V. Harding had just three more stories in the magazine after that, "The Underbody" in November 1949, "Take the Z Train" in March 1950, and, possibly an outlier, "Scope" in January 1951. Presumably, "The Underbody" was already lined up for publication when Buchanan left. "Take the Z Train" may also have been. "Scope" came more than a year later, though. That's why I have called it a possible outlier.
By 1950-1951, Buchanan was already a published author of books. His books from 1947-1948, before he left the employ of Weird Tales, were:
- The Story of Football in Text and Pictures (New York: Stephen-Paul, 1947)
- The Story of Basketball in Text and Pictures (New York: Stephen-Paul, 1948)
- People and Politics: The Pictorial History of the American Two-Party System (New York: Stephen-Paul, 1948)
His books from 1951, the same year in which the last Harding story was published, were:
- The Story of Tennis in Text and Pictures (New York: Vanguard Press, 1951)
- A Pictorial History of the Confederacy (New York: Crown Publishers, 1951)
- The World Series and Highlights of Baseball (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1951)
So, by 1950, when the enumerator of the Federal census came around again to his apartment (on May 25), Lamont Buchanan was a published author of books. There were three of them already. More were on the way. And yet he gave his occupation in the census as a freelance writer for magazines. Which magazines though? Was Weird Tales one of them?
Still more unanswered questions.
Now here's a reproduction of the only newspaper article I have found on Buchanan's writing career:
In case you can't read it, the pertinent part says:
Lamont Buchanan, making capital of his background as a ghost-writer for political windbags, and a concocter of "think pieces" for the oversized picture magazines, has produced an amazing pot-pourri combining the illusory profundity of the former with the graphic illustrative quality of the latter.
The source is a review of Buchanan's book People and Politics, written by Richard N. Boulton and published in the Hartford Courant Magazine, May 29, 1949. So in addition to being a magazine editor and author of books, Lamont Buchanan was a ghostwriter and a magazine writer. Another way of saying "ghostwriter" is to say that Buchanan wrote things for which other people took credit or were given credit.
This chronology continues . . .
Unfortunately, I haven't found Jean Milligan in the 1950 census.* But there was, finally, a direct link established in 1952 between her and Lamont Buchanan: they were married that year, presumably in Manhattan. Lamont Buchanan had his last known book, Ships of Steam, published in 1956. After that, he went silent, at least under his own name. But could he have continued in his anonymous or pseudonymous writing or in his ghostwriting? If he did, it couldn't have been for Weird Tales, which had come to an end in September 1954.
Lamont Buchanan wrote and edited under his own name. He also wrote--apparently anonymously--for "oversized picture magazines." And he was a ghostwriter. These things are known and sourced. On the other hand, we know almost nothing about Jean Milligan--except that she received checks for the Allison V. Harding stories. Until there is more evidence uncovered, this is, I think, where the mysterious case of Allison V. Harding stands.
* * *
By the way, there was another writer associated with Van Cleef, Jordan, & Ward. Her name was Edith Louise Hough (1915-1981) and she was the author of Sicily: The Fabulous Island, published in 1949. The website Find A Grave says that "for many years she was a secretary at the investment firm of Van Cleef, Jordan, Ward & Davidge in Washington, DC." On Thursday, May 30, 1957, she shot and killed Zurab Abdusheli in her apartment in Washington, D.C., after he had become "psychologically aggressive." Ms. Hough shot him several times before putting a final bullet into his head. "I couldn't stand to see him suffering," she said. The last shot, she said, was "to put him out of his misery." I wonder if she considered that all of his misery could have been avoided if she hadn't fired any shots at all, but then Edith Hough was a paranoid schizophrenic. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity and institutionalized, but only for a while. It's a famous case in the annals of psychiatry, and you will find plenty about it in print and on the Internet.
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*I have found a Miss Jean Milligan who was an educator, presenter, and assistant director at the Rochester Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York. She was supposed to have been a native of Youngstown, Ohio, rather than Cleveland. This Jean Milligan attended Oberlin College and taught art there for a time. She worked in Rochester from 1946 to 1951, when she took a position at the Detroit Institute of Arts. This doesn't sound like our woman, but there isn't anything here that rules her out except for her supposed birth in Youngstown. There is a photograph of a Jean Milligan in an Oberlin College yearbook of the right vintage, but that Jean doesn't look like our Jean. I think we'll have to go on looking.
Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley
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