James Bennett Wooding (1897-1954)-The First Collaboration

Author, Publisher, Real Estate Agent
Born December 27, 1897, Springfield, Illinois
Died August 22, 1954, San Antonio, Texas

James Bennett Wooding was born on December 27, 1897, in Springfield, Illinois, to Daniel James Wooding, a London-born publisher and real estate developer, and Augusta C. (Bennett) Wooding, whose father was also involved in real estate. Wooding attended Peacock Military College in San Antonio, Texas, at around the time of the First World War. In 1925, he married Marion Courtenay Beck. Like his father, Wooding was a magazine publisher. After his father died in 1930, Wooding seems to have put publishing behind him and became a real estate agent. He was employed in that field until his own death, which came on August 22, 1954, in San Antonio.

Daniel James Wooding (1860-1930) was in the newspaper business before going into the magazine publishing business. At the age of thirteen, he went to work for the Burlington Hawkeye in Burlington, Iowa, under Frank Hatton and the humorist and later Baptist minister Robert Jones Burdette (1844-1914). After ten years with the Hawkeye, Daniel J. Wooding launched his own journals, including The Justice and The Western Herald in Burlington, then The State Topics, Interstate Index, and State Manual in Springfield, Illinois. He continued in his publishing career after moving to Texas, evidently in the 1910s. There he headed Texas Pioneer, a magazine published out of San Antonio, circa 1928-1929. That would have been a short-lived venture, as Wooding died in 1930.

I've gone into all of that because I'm trying to figure out how James Bennett Wooding came to collaborate with Joseph Faus. They wrote at least three stories together:

• "The Object in the Handkerchief" in The Black Mask (Sept. 1921)
• "The Thief of Old Roads" in Action Stories (Feb. 1922)
• "The Extraordinary Experiment of Dr. Calgroni" in Weird Tales (Mar. 1923)

The two men lived states apart. In the early 1920s, Faus was in Florida, Wooding apparently in Texas. If Daniel Wooding had published a story magazine of some kind, that might have provided a link. Apparently he didn't. Maybe they met by mail, perhaps through a writer's magazine. In his letter to "The Eyrie" in November 1923, Faus mentioned The Writer's Monthly. I have never seen an issue of that magazine. I wonder if it or a similar title could have had a department through which writers in different parts of the country could reach each other. However it happened, their lone story for Weird Tales was a result.

In addition to his stories with Joseph Faus, Wooding wrote stories on his own. These appeared from 1918 to 1936 in Experience, Hollywood Nights, Scandals, Snappy, Street & Smith's Love Story Magazine, Zippy, 10 Story Book, and other titles. Coincidentally or not, both Wooding and Faus had their first stories (listed in The FictionMags Index that is) in the December 1918 issue of 10 Story Magazine, subtitled "America's Most Daring Sex Story Magazine." Maybe they contacted each other through that illustrious journal.

James Bennett Wooding's Story in Weird Tales
"The Extraordinary Experiment of Dr. Calgroni" (1923) with Joseph Faus

Further Reading

"Wooding, Daniel James" in Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Sangamon County, Volume 2, Part 2, by Newton Bateman and Paul Selby (Windmill Pub., 1912), pages 1735-1736.

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley