By my count, there were a dozen authors who were new in Weird Tales in the issue of May 1923. Half are known. The other half are not, at least to me. First are the six known authors.
A.G. Birch (1883-1972)--A.G. Birch was Albert G. "Al" Birch, a reporter, photographer, editor, and publicity manager at the Denver Post. He was also in publicity with Famous Players-Lasky and Paramount. His story was "The Moon Terror," a two-part serial and the lead story in that May issue. And because it was the lead story, it was also the first illustrated story to appear in Weird Tales. The illustration was of course by William F. Heitman (1878-1945).
I'll have more on Birch and "The Moon Terror" later in this series. You can also read about both at the following URL:
https://archive.org/details/BirchA.G.TheMoonTerrorAndOtherStories1927/page/n191/mode/2up
Kenneth Duane Whipple (1894-1974)--Kenneth Duane Whipple was a reporter for the Claremont Eagle in Claremont, New Hampshire. There were scads of Whipples in New England during the Colonial and Early National periods, subsequently in other parts of the country. H.P. Lovecraft's maternal grandfather bore the name Whipple as his Christian name. He was Whipple Van Buren Phillips (1833-1904), and he was named, presumably, after his paternal grandmother, Esther Whipple Phillips (1767-1842). Her father was Captain Benedict Whipple (1739-1819). The point of all this is that Kenneth Duane Whipple and H.P. Lovecraft may very well have been related, though distantly. In our family, we have Whipples, too. I wonder if we could be related to Lovecraft as well.
Whipple's story, "The Secret Fear," is described in the blurb as "A 'Creepy' Detective Story." The narrator is a newspaper reporter, just like the author. There is talk of an escaped gorilla. (Another gorilla.) There are also Irishmen, including a beat cop named Corcoran, the dead man Terence McFadden, and police captain Dolan. (The police commissioner in The Spirit comic strip is also named Dolan.) The victim's Irishness pertains because he was superstitious: it was his secret fear that killed him.
Vincent Starrett (1886-1974)--Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett was born above a bookshop in Toronto, Canada. Like Saul Bellow (1915-2005), Starrett moved with his family from Canada to Chicago when he was a child. Starrett was a bookman, author, poet, critic, newspaper reporter, columnist, Sherlock Holmes aficionado, and biographer of Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?). "Penelope," a comic short story about a man's upside-down day, was his first for Weird Tales. If you have ever loved a woman, you understand the pull of gravity Penelope exerts on the main character.
Bruce Grant (1893-1977)--Barely more than a page long, Bruce Grant's story, entitled "Feline," was the first "storiette" in Weird Tales. Grant was born in Wichita Falls, Texas, and worked on a cattle ranch before becoming a newspaper reporter. He was also the author of novels and nonfiction books about the American West. There is a very informative article about him entitled "Native Wichitan Compiles Reference Work on Indians" in the Wichita Falls Times, March 22, 1959, page 69. Like Ernest Hemingway, Grant killed himself with a shotgun, this in the basement of his home in Winnetka, Illinois.
Lyle Wilson Holden (1885-1960)--Lyle Wilson Holden was a poet, school teacher, and school principal in Rochester, New York. His short story "The Devil Plant" should go in the Botanical Fiction Database. For those interested in tentacles in genre fiction, the plant of the title is also known as "the octopus plant."
Mollie Frank Ellis (1880-1948)--Author, lecturer, and clubwoman Mollie Garfield Frank Ellis was born in Greencastle, Indiana, and attended DePauw University in her native city. Her story, "Case No. 27," is set in an insane asylum. Mollie lived in Indianapolis late in life and died in a sanitorium in that city.
Next: The Unknown Authors
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| William F. Heitman's illustration for "The Moon Terror" by A.G. Birch, the first illustration to appear in Weird Tales. In the story, the woman is described as nearly nude. That wouldn't have worked, I guess, in the popular press, and so here her nudity is concealed by a cloth. Human sacrifice and execution were common themes in Weird Tales and in other genre fiction or pulp fiction from the 1920s onward. This is the first instance in "The Unique Magazine." |
Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley
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