Heart of Darkness-Part Two

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899) can be read simply as an adventure story, even if there is more to it than that. Like much of the best literature, it can be read at more than one level. Good genre fiction works that way, too. Merely sensational things are soon forgotten. Things of substance and quality stick.

In Conrad's novella, a seaman named Marlow, beginning in England, sets off for the Continent to secure work, then journeys to the west coast of Africa to carry out his assignment. He soon finds that he is to repair a boat, then to take it upriver to a remote place where a mysterious and intriguing figure named Kurtz resides and appears to reign. Conrad spent nearly twenty years of his life as a seaman. Those years included a monthlong trip up the Congo River and other trips across the world. Many of his works are about men and ships at sea.

Again, not everyone can be Joseph Conrad, nor can everyone be Herman Melville or Jack London, who also went to sea, or Ernest Hemingway or James Jones, who went to war. But a writer ought to be able to draw from some other experience besides reading comic books, watching TV shows, and playing video games, which is how many of the authors in the Cosmic Horror Issue of Weird Tales seem to have spent their lives. Their characters follow their lead. Too many of them seem wrapped up in themselves. The lead characters in "A Ghost Story for Christmas" and "Night Fishing" are prime examples. Kurtz is one wrapped up in himself, too--everything to which he refers is his--but Marlow recognizes him as a great man. And he is (possibly), though great in a terrible way. One difference between Kurtz and too many of the characters in the Cosmic Horror Issue (their authors, too) is that he has gone somewhere and done something. They apparently have not. They have remained where they are, wrapped up in themselves, turned inward upon themselves like the worm uroboros. The old saying is that a man wrapped up in himself makes a small package. That is too evident in the pages of Weird Tales #367 and apparently, too, in the lives of its contributors. There are exceptions, but perhaps only barely. I will add that you don't have to look into your own navel and pick at your own little scabs--you don't have to examine your self-made inner voids when there is a whole world out there brimming with mystery and adventure. Even if you are bound to a place and a way of life, you might still turn loose your imagination and let it wander freely in the larger world. Good authors do that.

* * *

Another problem with the Cosmic Horror Issue of Weird Tales is that it is shamelessly, perhaps thoughtlessly, commercial. Its authors place the names of commercial products in their stories as if they had been paid to do so. In contrast, there is only one brandname in Heart of Darkness, Martini-Henry, the name of a rifle. That's a concrete detail. It's not product placement. In general, I think using the names of weapons, cars, cigarettes, and alcoholic drinks is probably okay in a work of fiction. The list of acceptable brandnames used after that must be, I think, pretty short, especially in a short story.

Joseph Conrad was conservative in an old-fashioned sense, meaning that he was aristocratic, perhaps reactionary, certainly skeptical of progress, and suspicious of liberal values. People seem to have forgotten that what they call capitalism is a liberal rather than a conservative institution. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow shows his disdain for commercialism and the relentless chasing after money that he witnesses in Africa. Most of the commercial products in his tale are cheap and lousy, or useless, like the pieces of brass wire used to pay African natives. There is one exception: ivory.

"The word 'ivory' rang in the air [Marlow remembers], was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from a corpse." (Dell, 1960, p. 53)

That "imbecile rapacity" is seemingly everywhere in our world of today--even in the pages of fiction. That's just how it is, I guess. We are all human and so necessarily broken, warped, and twisted, at least in our worst moments and by our worst instincts. Art is supposed to rise above these things, though, and when an author of fiction uses a half-dozen or more brandnames in as many pages of his or her story, you can't help but smell the whiff of the commercial corpse. People have forgotten God, yet still they pray to the golden calf of money and material objects. And not just material objects but specific commercial objects, in other words products with brandnames. Many of those branded products have become not material at all--they are called services instead--yet still have the same taint and whiff of the commercial corpse. And now human beings seem to want to transform themselves into branded products, to make of themselves mere objects, to objectify and commodify themselves, a recipe, I should point out, for disquiet and unhappiness in the self-objectifying person. (As my philosophy professor, Mr. Pedtke, pointed out a long time ago, we are not things.) Anyway, I think that authors should cease with the product placement and the thoughtless and shameless deployment of brandnames. And editors should make sure that they do. Let fiction be art rather than advertisement.

To be continued . . .

The Heart of Darkness in a Signet edition, date and cover artist unknown. I have altered this low-resolution image from one I found on line. Whatever you do, don't take this as a true representation of the original book cover. (I wish people would scan their images instead of taking pictures of them.)

This cover illustration is misleading. It doesn't really represent a scene from inside, at least in Heart of Darkness. But when I saw it, I thought of King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard (1885), especially the character Foulata. Once I thought of Rider Haggard's book, I considered the possibility that Heart of Darkness is a kind of inversion of King Solomon's Mines, that it is a story set in a more nearly real world rather than in a fantasy world. Even if that's a worthwhile interpretation, we should remember that H. Rider Haggard lived in Africa, too, and would have had no illusions about the place or its peoples, including its European peoples.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Heart of Darkness-Part One

In thinking and writing about the Cosmic Horror Issue of Weird Tales (2023), my thoughts went pretty soon to Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Published first as a three-part serial in Blackwood's Magazine (Feb.-Mar.-Apr., 1899), Heart of Darkness first appeared in a hardbound edition in November 1902. Even if you haven't read Conrad's novella of an upriver trip made in colonial Africa, you probably know its most famous line of dialogue, Kurtz's last words: "The horror! The horror!" That line and the greater theme of Heart of Darkness are what led me from cosmic horror to Kurtz's horror.

Not everyone can be Joseph Conrad. In fact, only Conrad was Conrad. But it would do for aspiring authors to read as widely as possible and to learn whatever lessons they can by doing so. One of the things lacking in the Cosmic Horror Issue is substance, or weight. As I wrote before, that issue is pretty thin in terms of its content. Some of its stories are very thin. But there is real substance in Heart of Darkness. Although it isn't heavy, it has weight. It's also very well written and stylistically polished. The opening, in which a cruising yawl called the Nellie, bearing five men, comes to rest in the sea-reach of the river Thames, is beautifully done and almost perfect in its depiction of a scene to which I have never been witness and probably never will be. But in reading I was almost there, and so might you be, too.

Heart of Darkness is a tale. It's very much like a weird tale in its structure, theme, plot, and atmosphere. Or maybe the weird tale is like this and other tales in that they are all told in a certain way. This tale is actually a tale within a tale. Marlow is one of the men aboard the Nellie. He tells his tale to the others, including the narrator. You could call this a framing device. It's also in the club-story format, even if the telling isn't done in a club setting. I have a yellowing copy of the Laurel Conrad edition published by Dell in 1960 (cover below). The cover art is by Richard Powers, who created so many science fiction and fantasy covers. On page 32 is the phrase "tellers of tales." The word weird appears four times, twice in describing incantations. There is presaging of weird fiction in the Heart of Darkness, especially of the tales of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. 

Many authors of dark fantasy and other dark sub-genres love their darkness. Marlow's first words are of darkness and of the depths of time. His tale begins in its telling on a river to the sea. The tale itself is about a trip in the opposite direction and on a different continent, from the ocean into the inner darkness of the title. But there was once darkness where the five men have come to in their boat, for this, too, was once the home of what Marlow calls savages. And civilized men--Romans--once came here in their ships, just as Europeans had done and were doing in Africa in his time. Marlow points out to the men hearing his tale, "But darkness was here yesterday." (p. 30) His awareness of time isn't quite cosmic, but it is at least historic, prehistoric, atavistic. Marlow speaks of that long-ago time and place:

"They [the Romans] were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he [a Roman] was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by and by, if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga--perhaps too much dice, you know--coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him--all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination--you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."

Darkness--journeying away from civilization and into mystery, savagery, and isolation--fascination with what awaits and what lies along the way--the witnessing of abominations--encounters with the incomprehensible--these are some of the same subjects of weird fiction.

To be continued . . .

Note: I accidentally posted this and the following entry earlier this month. Now I will pick up with them and this series again. I hope you don't mind waiting for their return.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Von Foltz & Frazetta

Speaking of the ancient world, I would like to show two pictures, one of which looks a little like the other. The first is "Pericles' Funeral Oration" by German artist Philipp Von Foltz (1805-1877). The second is Frank Frazetta's wraparound cover illustration for Child of the Sun by Kyle Onstott and Lance Horner (Fawcett, 1972). This could be an example of two artists arriving at the same solution to a similar compositional, dramatic, and narrative problem. On the other hand, there could be a little swiping involved. I'll let you decide for yourself. By the way, the Roman speaker in Frazetta's painting looks like a self-portrait.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Pyramids on the Cover of Weird Tales

I wrote recently of pyramids, and this month I'm writing about the January 1925 issue of Weird Tales. Today I can write about both, for on the cover of that issue is a pyramid, a step pyramid and the only one of its kind to appear on the cover of "The Unique Magazine." There had been pyramids before, on the first-anniversary issue of May/June/July 1924. There would be one more in the original run of the magazine, in February 1929, and one more after that, in Winter 1985.

Weird Tales, May/June/July 1924, the first and only quarterly issue of "The Unique Magazine." Cover story: "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" by Houdini (ghostwritten by H.P. Lovecraft). Cover art by R.M. Mally.

Weird Tales, January 1925. Cover story: "Invaders from the Outside" by J. Schlossel. Cover art by Andrew Brosnatch. 

"I heard sighs of horror from my two companions beneath me, and for a single moment we hung motionless along the chain's length, swinging along the huge pyramid's glowing side at a height of hundreds of feet above the shining streets below. Then the creature raised one of its tentacles, a metal tool in its grasp, which he brought down in a sharp blow on the chain at the window's edge. Again he repeated the blow, and again.

     "He was cutting the chain!"

Weird Tales, February 1929. Cover story: "The Star-Stealers" by Edmond Hamilton. Cover art by Hugh Rankin.

Weird Tales, Winter 1985. Cover art by Ro H. Kim (Hyang Ro Kim). This cover combines a pyramid with the pyramidal body and tentacles of Rankin's previous design.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Bessie Douglas of Portland, Maine

The January 1925 issue of Weird Tales includes eight letters to the editor, these published in "The Eyrie." We should realize that a "letter" in Weird Tales wasn't necessarily a whole letter. Few writers had the privilege of having a whole letter printed in "The Eyrie." Far more often, a "letter" was an excerpt, sometimes long, more often short, but almost certainly not the whole thing.

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database lists seven writers of letters in that January issue of one hundred years ago. The missing name is that of Bessie Douglas of Portland, Maine. There is an extremely spare passage from her letter in "The Eyrie" of one hundred years ago. It's embedded in a paragraph regarding the type of story Weird Tales should publish:

     Up to date, those who want horror stories have distinctly the advantage, but many of them qualify their demand for thrillers by saying that the horror stories must not be disgusting. Some of our readers want the magazine to drip with gore ("the scarier they are, the better I like them," writes Bessie Douglas, of Portland, Maine); but these are in a small minority. As near as the editor can make out from the expression of opinion so far received, the readers of Weird Tales don't want anything nauseating, and yet they do want to read eery, thrilling and bizarre tales of the Edgar Allan Poe type--tales such as they cannot get in any other magazine. But the question is still open. Weird Tales belongs to you, the readers, and your opinions will be eagerly welcomed. [Boldface added.]

Women can be hard to find in public records and old newspapers, but I found a Miss Bessie Douglas of Portland, Maine, a seamstress and possibly a singer or musician. We might not know her identity, but we can at least add Bessie Douglas' name to the list of people who wrote to "The Eyrie."

By the way, did you notice what Farnsworth Wright wrote?

"Weird Tales belongs to you, the readers [. . .] ."

I wish that were still true.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Lady Anne Bonny (Dates Unknown)

Lady Anne Bonny was the pen name of an unknown author. She had just one story in Weird Tales, a three-part serial called "Wings of Power," published in the issues of January, February, and March of 1925. "Wings of Power" is called a "Pseudo-Scientific Novel" in the table of contents. The pseudonym of the author and the title of the story would seem incongruous, for Anne Bonny was a real person, a lady pirate, active for just a few short months in 1720 when there was no such thing as a "pseudo-scientific story," and almost no science at all. No one knows when or where she was born, nor when or where she died. Lady Anne Bonny the author is unknown, and her namesake lady pirate is very nearly unknown.

"Wings of Power" is a long, melodramatic story with a very full cast of characters. There is a mad-scientist type, Professor Kurt Maquarri, and a damsel in distress, his step-daughter Joan Suffern, who does a lot of sufferin'. The science is nonsense, but pseudoscientific nonsense in a story can be fun sometimes. You just have to give up your knowledge of real science and go along for the ride. I wrote that the author's name and the title of her story would seem incongruous, but the pirate Blackbeard figures in it, though not very prominently. I haven't read the story, only breezed through it, looking for clues as to the author's identity. I didn't find anything conclusive. I also read "The Eyrie" for the months after "Wings of Power" was published. I didn't see any mention of it. I take that to mean that, although no one hated it, also no one loved it. Lady Anne Bonny seems to have come and gone. Did she ever write under her own name?

There's just one thing: in the same issues in which "Wings of Power" was published, there were illustrations by an artist named Jessie Bond, who sometimes used "Bonny" as her nickname, who was also a writer, and who was drawn to the subtropics of Florida and the Bahamas. Anne Bonny the pirate got her start by stealing a ship in the Bahamas. So could Jessie Bond, aka Bonny Bond, have been Lady Anne Bonny? Could she have written in collaboration with someone else, such as Farnsworth Wright?

The heading for part one of "Wings of Power" by Lady Anne Bonny, Weird Tales, January 1925, illustration by Andrew Brosnatch.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Two Poems About Two Crows

Francis Hard, aka Farnsworth Wright, had a poem called "Two Crows" in the January 1925 issue of Weird Tales. Just six years earlier, Wright had been a soldier stationed in France. In composing his poem, he must have drawn on memories of the Great War:

Two Crows
By Francis Hard (Weird Tales, Jan. 1925)

Two crows flapped over dismally
(So wearily, so drearily)
To the blackened limb of a blasted tree;
The shells flew screaming overhead,
And the field was covered thick with dead--
The earth reeked with its dead.

One crow lamented to his mate
(So wearily, so drearily):
"How long, how long must we now wait
For the taste of food that was so good
Before the shrapnel shattered the wood
And loaded the ground with dead?

"The odor sweet of dying men"
(Lamented he so drearily),
"How strangely pleasant was it when
I sensed it first with ravished breath!
But I am sated, and sick to death,
And would fain lie yon with the dead."

A shell came moaning through the air
(So drearily, so eerily)
And burst where the crows were plaining there;
It shivered the wreck of the blasted tree,
And bits of crow fell bloodily
Among the tangled dead.

* * *

A year and a month later, in February 1926, in his capacity as editor, Wright placed a traditional ballad called "The Twa Corbies" ("The Two Crows") in Weird Tales:

The Twa Corbies
(Old Ballad)
[By Anonymous]

As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies making a mane.
The tane unto the tother say:
Where sail we gang and dine today?

In behint yon auld fail dike
I wot there lies a new-slain knight.
Naebody kens that he lies there
But his hawk, his hound, and his lady fair.

His hound is to the hunting gone,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,
His lady's ta'en another mate,
So we may mak our dinner sweet.

I'll sit on his white hause-bane,
Ye'll pick out his bonny blue een,
Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair
We’ll theek our nest when it grows bare.

Mony a one for him makes mane,
But nane sail ken where he is gane.
O'er his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair.

* * *

"The Twa Corbies" was first in print in 1812. A century later, it was reprinted in Ballads Weird and Wonderful (1912), illustrated by Vernon Hill (1887-1972). It seems to me that Farnsworth Wright had read "The Twa Corbies" and was inspired by it in writing his own poem. The refrain, the repeated "wearily," "drearily," and "eerily," would seem to have been inspired by "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe and its own refrain of "evermore" and "nevermore," also from its opening line:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

I wrote about "The Twa Corbies" on December 19, 2022. You can read what I wrote by clicking here.

Two corvids on the cover of Weird Tales:

Weird Tales, July 1945, cover art by Lee Brown Coye.

Weird Tales, September 1939, cover art by Virgil Finlay.

And what might be a crow but looks more like a myna:

Weird Tales, January 1946, cover art by Albert Roanoke Tilburne.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Francis Hard (1888-1940)

Pseudonym of Farnsworth Wright
Author, Editor, Poet, Journalist, Translator, Soldier
Born July 29, 1888, Santa Barbara, California
Died June 12, 1940, Manhattan, New York, New York

Francis Hard was Farnsworth Wright. He used that pseudonym while writing stories and poems for magazines of which he was the editor. You could call it a conflict of interest for an editor to place his own works in a publication that he edits. I don't see it that way. An editor should have someone else look at his story or poem before putting it into print. He should also accept "No" or "It needs work" in response. But I think it's okay for an editor to publish his own work, even under his own name. Farnsworth Wright wrote as Francis Hard anyway.

Farnsworth Wright was born on July 29, 1888, in Santa Barbara, California, to George Francis Wright (1848-1892), a civil engineer and a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and Genevieve Hard Wright (1850-1914), a soprano singer and music teacher and an instructor in physical culture. And so already we have an origin for Wright's nom de plume, Francis Hard.

According to his World War I draft card, Farnsworth Wright attended the University of Nevada, where he began his military service. Wright also studied journalism at the University of Washington. (See his yearbook picture below.) His father had served before him in the U.S. Navy. They were descended from Samuel Farnsworth of Groton, Massachusetts, a drummer in Captain Joseph Moor's Company, Colonel William Prescott's Regiment of Massachusetts Militia during the Revolutionary War. Samuel Farnsworth enlisted on May 15, 1775, or less than a month after the war had commenced at Lexington and Concord. He was presumably at the Battle of Bunker Hill less than a month later. On November 9, 1910, the Colorado Society of the Sons of the American Revolution approved Farnsworth Wright's application for membership. Less than eight years later, on September 9, 1918, Private Farnsworth Wright of Company H, 342nd Infantry Regiment, 86th Infantry Division--the Blackhawk Division--shipped out from New York to France aboard the Minnekahda, continuing the Farnsworth and Wright families' records of service to their country.

Wright returned to the United States on August 4, 1919. He had been promoted by then to sergeant. During and after the Great War, Wright had served as a translator in France and I believe in occupied Germany. Before, based in Chicago, he had worked as a newspaper reporter for Musical America Company of New York. He was also, oddly enough, an Esperantist. Music, languages, and culture seem to have come naturally to members of the Wright family.

Farnsworth Wright returned stateside in the same year that Jacob C. Henneberger, late of the U.S. Navy, arrived in Indianapolis. Henneberger also had connections in Chicago. In 1922 (or thereabouts), he formed The Rural Publishing Corporation with a former college classmate, John M. Lansinger. In one way or another, Farnsworth Wright met Henneberger and Lansinger. Wright had a short story, "The Closing Hand," in the first issue of their new magazine, Weird Tales, in March 1923. He had other submissions after that and began working as a reader of manuscripts at some point. Weird Tales and the business behind it foundered in mid-1924. When it came back in November of that year, Farnsworth Wright was full editor. It was then that he began using the name Francis Hard. As Hard, he had five poems and a short story in Weird Tales, plus one story each in it companion titles Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet Magazine, which were really the same magazine with successively different titles.

Francis Hard's career as an author and a poet lasted almost as long as Farnsworth Wright's did as editor. Wright remained in his post until 1940, the year in which he died at age fifty-one. He was buried at Willamette National Cemetery in Oregon. His widow, Marjorie Jeanette Zinkie Wright (1893-1974), joined him there the year after her death.

Francis Hard's Stories & Poems in Weird Tales, Oriental Stories, and The Magic Carpet Magazine
(All were in Weird Tales unless otherwise noted.)
"The Great Panjandrum" (short story; Nov. 1924)
"Two Crows" (poem; Jan. 1925)
"The Dark Pool" (poem; Apr. 1925)
"The Death Angel" (poem; Sept. 1925)
"The Evening Star" (poem; Mar. 1926)
"The White Queen" in Oriental Stories (short story; Nov. 1930)
"The Picture of Judas" in The Magic Carpet Magazine (short story; Apr. 1933)
"After Two Nights of the Ear-Ache" (poem; Oct. 1937)

Above, the University of Washington yearbook pictures of Farnsworth Wright (1888-1940) and his future wife, Marjorie Zinkie (1893-1974), from the 1913-1914 school year. Marjorie Zinkie studied to be a librarian and worked in that capacity in Idaho, Michigan, and Washington State. Together the Wrights had a son, Robert Farnsworth Wright (1930-1993). He and his wife, Ruthora Marie McBride Wright (1930-1993), died within five months of each other in 1993. I can't say whether Farnsworth and Marjorie Wright have any living descendants.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Jessie Bond (1894-1991)

Jessie C. Bond Munroe
Aka Bonnie Bee, Bonnie Bond, Bonnie Munroe
Fashion Artist, Illustrator, Poet, Painter
Born January 4, 1894, Decatur, Illinois
Died January 20, 1991, Palm Beach County, Florida

She was born in January, married in January, and died in January, and so in January I will write about artist and poet Jessie Bond. She was born on January 4, 1894, in Decatur, Illinois. Her father, William Branham Bond (1853-1913), was a millwright. Younger than her husband by a generation, Jessie's mother, Flora Etta (Williams) Bond (1871-1949), was a solicitor of public houses and later kept boarders. (Maybe those two things are the same.) Jessie Bond lived in and received her schooling in Decatur, Illinois, and St. Louis, Missouri. By 1920, she and her mother were in Indianapolis. Flora Bond lived on Massachusetts Avenue in that census year. In 1930, she resided on 30th Street, just west of Meridian Avenue. By then her daughter had gone far from home and would soon be herself a mother.

Jessie Bond is someone new to me. Her last name is in Jaffery & Cook's Collector's Index to Weird Tales. I found her first name in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Jessie Bond had six known illustrations in Weird Tales, from December 1924 to March 1925. These were in Farnsworth Wright's first half-year as editor of the magazine. I pretty quickly found an artist named Jessie Bond who lived in Florida. But was she the same Jessie Bond? What could her connection have been to Weird Tales? Then I found that Jessie Bond had moved to Florida in late 1924 from Indianapolis. I also found that she had studied at the John Herron School of Art in that same city. Remember that the editorial offices of Weird Tales magazine were in Indianapolis from 1923 to 1926. Weird Tales and Farnsworth Wright had addresses in the Circle City during those years, and they found artists among its residents, including William F. Heitman and George O. Olinick. Jessie Bond was one of them, too.

To start again, Jessie Bond went to school in St. Louis. In 1918-1919, she studied at the John Herron School of Art in Indianapolis. (One of her classmates was Hoosier cartoonist Russell Berg [1901-1966].) Jessie worked as a staff artist at the William H. Block Company department store in Indianapolis. Founded in 1874 by an Austro-Hungarian immigrant, Wilhelm Herman Bloch (1855-1928), the Wm. H. Block Co., or Block's, was a mainstay in downtown Indianapolis for many decades. I remember going there with my mother when we were children. Maybe that was the first time I ever rode in an elevator. I remember full-page, hand-drawn fashion advertisements for Block's clothing in the Indianapolis Star. These were a mainstay, too. The Block's building, located at the corner of Illinois and Market streets, was designed by architects Vonnegut & Bohn, the Vonnegut part for Kurt Vonnegut, Sr. (1884-1957). He was the father of author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007), who found success early on in the pages of slick magazines and probably never had to turn to the pulps for income. I wouldn't rule out that he read Weird Tales as a child. I wonder if he knew that "The Unique Magazine" had originated in the city of his birth.

About the time that October turned into November 1924, Jessie Bond moved from Indianapolis to Miami, Florida. She must have been joyous in her move from a midwestern November to an eternal far southern summer. In a contemporaneous newspaper feature article, she was quoted as saying, "I find that I go at my work here with a different spirit. Miami is a playground, and that spirit seems to unconsciously enter into one, until one ceases to take even work seriously, and one does it more for the joy of accomplishment."

By the time she moved, Jessie must have already established a connection to Farnsworth Wright and Weird Tales. He was brand new as editor in November 1924. She had one or two drawings in each issue from December 1924 until March 1925, including two in the January 1925 issue. One of these was for "The Specter Priestess of Wrightstone" by Herman F. Wright. Herman F. Wright is an unknown author. I wonder now if he was actually Farnsworth Wright--F. Wright--in disguise. Wright had another work, a poem called "Two Crows," in that same issue. This was published under his pseudonym Francis Hard.

For five years Jessie Bond worked as a fashion artist for William M. Burdine's Sons department store in Miami. She also conducted the fashion page at the Miami Herald for one season. On January 11, 1928, she married New York native Robert Morris "Bob" Munroe (1896-1971) in Broward County, Florida. He worked as a newspaper columnist and as the director of advertising and publicity for the city of Coral Gables. Their son, John Macgregor Munroe, Ph.D., born on February 2, 1931, died just three years and three months ago, on November 4, 2021, at age ninety. He was a musician, educator, and choir director. He named one of his own daughters Bonnie, presumably after her grandmother . . .

Bob Munroe was a humorist and poet. His wife was a poet, too. Jessie Bond wrote under a pen name, "Bonnie Bee." She was also called Bonnie Bond and Bonnie Munroe, and she had poems in the New York World, the Tampa Morning Tribune, and Florida Poets--1931, edited by Henry Harrison. Bob and Jessie Munroe were acquainted with Vivian Yeiser Laramore (1892-1975), the first and only female poet laureate of the State of Florida. Vivian wrote about both of them in her column "Miami Muse," about Florida poets, in the Miami Daily News. Imagine a time when there was poetry in newspapers and a newspaper column was devoted every week to poets and their work.

After the birth of her son, Jessie became a portrait painter. She liked to collect seashells, and she loved the subtropics of Florida and the Bahamas. She seems to have lived in Florida for the rest of her blessedly long life. Jessie C. Bond Munroe died on January 20, 1991, in Palm Beach County, Florida. She was ninety-seven years old.

Jessie Bond's Illustrations in Weird Tales
"Fairy Gossamer" by Harry Harrison Kroll (Dec. 1924)
"Phantoms" by Laurence R. D'Orsay (Jan. 1925)
"The Specter Priestess of Wrightstone" by Herman F. Wright (Jan. 1925)
"An Unclaimed Reward" by Strickland Gillilan (Feb. 1925)
"The Magic of Dai Nippon" by J.U. Giesy (Feb. 1925)
"Black Curtains" by G. Frederick Montefiore (Mar. 1925)

(Of the six authors listed above, two--Harry Harrison Kroll and Strickland Gillilan--can be classed as Hoosiers. If Herman F. Wright was Farnsworth Wright, then that would make three. The FictionMags Index lists another credit for Jessie Bond, illustrations for "New Stories of Gilbert and Sullivan," with Rupert D'Oyly Carte, J. M. Gordon, Isabel Jay, Henry A. Lytton, and Courtice Pounds, published in The Strand Magazine in December 1925.)

Further Reading

• "Business Girls Sound Praises of Work and Recreation in Miami" by Isabel Stone, The Herald (Miami, Florida), November 15, 1924, page 4-B.

• "Miami Muse: A Weekly Column Devoted to Florida's Poets" by Vivian Yeiser Laramore, Miami Daily News, March 26, 1933, Society Section, page 11.

• "Miami Muse: A Weekly Column Devoted to Florida's Poets" by Vivian Yeiser Laramore, Miami Daily News, September 22, 1935, page 7, which includes some of her poems.

• "Gables Artist Plays Role of Santa To Give Orphan Long-Sought Lessons" by Judy Whitney Malone, Miami Daily News, December 15, 1939, page 19. 

Jessie Bond Munroe, aka Bonnie Munroe, in a newspaper photo accompanying the feature article "Gables Artist Plays Role of Santa To Give Orphan Long-Sought Lessons" by Judy Whitney Malone, in the Miami Daily News, December 15, 1939, page 19.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Armstrong Livingston (1885-1948)

Robert Armstrong Livingston, Jr.

Author, Businessman

Born August 16, 1885, New York, New York,

Died February 7, 1948, Manhattan, New York, New York

Robert Armstrong "Ray" Livingston, Jr., known as a writer as Armstrong Livingston, was born on August 16, 1885, in New York City. His father was Robert Armstrong Livingston, Sr. (1854-1913), a New York State assemblyman. Both were part of an old and very prominent family in New York State. Among their relatives were the Roosevelts.

Armstrong Livingston was educated at St. George's School in Newport, Rhode Island. He worked in the insurance business but was more well known as an author, mostly of mystery and detective stories. His story "As Obligated" in the January 1925 issue of Weird Tales was his only one for that magazine. He had dozens of others in All-Story Weekly, Clues, Detective Story Magazine, Gaiety, Metropolitan, Saucy Romantic Adventures, and other titles from 1918 to 1945. From 1922 to 1945, he published at least sixteen books:

• The Mystery of the Twin Rubies (1922)
• On the Right Wrists (1925)
• The Ju-Ju Man (1926) (with Thomas K. Griffiths), originally serialized in Argosy Allstory Weekly beginning June 17, 1922.
• Light-Fingered Ladies: A Detective Story (1927), originally serialized in Detective Story Magazine beginning August 14, 1926.
• The Guilty Accuser (1928)
• The Monk of Hambleton (1928)
• The Doublecross (1929)
• The Monster in the Pool (1929), originally serialized in Detective Story Magazine beginning January 21, 1928.
• Trackless Death (1929)
• The Murder Trap (1930)
• In Cold Blood (1931)
• Murder Is Easy (1933)
• Magic for Murder (1936)
• Night of Crime (1938)
• The Murdered and the Missing (non-fiction; 1947) (with John G. Stein)
• The Case of the Walking Corpse (1945)

On April 23, 1911, Livingston married Gladys Patten Grover in New York. He and they lived in Cuba, Bermuda, Algiers, Nice, Monaco, and other places. They later divorced. On December 30, 1926, Livingston remarried. His new wife was Ruth Stevens Dorr.

Livingston's life was short. He died on February 7, 1948, in Manhattan, at age sixty-two. He was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

Armstrong Livingston's Story in Weird Tales
"As Obligated" (Jan. 1925)

Further Reading
Look on the Internet for discussions of Livingston's mystery and detective novels.

Magic for Murder by Armstrong Livingston, "A Cavalcade Book," No. 2, date of publication and cover artist unknown. 

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales in 1925

Happy New Year to Readers of Weird Tales!

I finished up last year by writing about the one-hundredth anniversary issue of Weird Tales, published in 2023. I will have more on that issue and some ideas connected to it, but I would like to write about other things for a while and get away from that dreary parade.

The first issue of Weird Tales was published in March 1923, thus the first calendar year of "The Unique Magazine" was not a full one. There were only eight issues published in 1923. Weird Tales almost came to an end in its second year. There was a three-month gap during which there weren't any issues published at all, and so only seven appeared in 1924.

Nineteen twenty-five was different, for that was the first full year of Weird Tales, with issues in every month. Twelve more full years would follow, making thirteen dozen issues in all during those years. Nineteen thirty-eight, during which Weird Tales was purchased by Short Stories, Inc., was the last full year of the magazine. I doubt there will ever be another. We just don't have it in us to write enough good stories or to publish and purchase enough issues for that to happen. That's a shame, I think, but not really necessary.

The January 1925 issue has a science-fiction or science-fantasy cover. Illustrating "Invaders from Outside" by J. Schossel (Joseph H. Schlossel [1902-1977]), it may have been the first magazine cover of any kind to show pointy-eared space aliens. Schlossel's aliens, drawn by cover artist Andrew Brosnatch (1896-1965) (below), look suspiciously like the gray aliens of flying saucer folklore--or vice versa. As I have said before, aliens and their spaceships must be imagined before they can be seen.

That January issue was the first to have letters in response to the return of Weird Tales in November 1924, this under its new editor, Farnsworth Wright. "The Eyrie," subtitled in the table of contents as "A Chat with the Readers," included letters from seven readers. At least four of those readers were also writers of fiction, three of them for Weird Tales. "The Eyrie" is no longer a place for readers to let their ideas and opinions be heard. Instead it's one in which the editor gets to hear himself talk, I guess because he likes so much the sound of his own voice, even when he doesn't have anything very interesting to say.

There were other developments in the magazine world in 1925. On February 21 of that year, The New Yorker, a quintessential slick magazine, made its debut. The New Yorker has been published continuously since then. Weird Tales of course has not been. Weird Tales was originally a pulp magazine but is now also a slick. The New Yorker is a far cry better than the current Weird Tales, which is really just Weird Tales in name only, with a few of its former trappings still in place. I'm not sure which magazine has come down more in the world.

Like Weird Tales, President Calvin Coolidge got his start in 1923. On March 4, 1925, he was inaugurated into his first and only full term as president. The 1920s would thereafter gallop to a close, which you could say came a little early, in late October 1929 when the stock market crashed. During those years, Weird Tales was reaching its peak. The style of the 1920s and '30s was Art Deco, one that got its name after an exposition that opened in Paris on April 29, 1925. The Art Deco style made its way into Weird Tales, too, for example in the art of Hugh Rankin ( 1878-1956). In between those two events, on April 10, 1925, the culture of the 1920s put forth an exemplar of its literature in F. Scott Fitzgerald's great novel, The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby has its detractors. I'm not one of them. I have read The Great Gatsby three or four times. I am astonished at how modern it is, even after a century, and how radically different it must have been from some of the stuffy literature of its time. I can't say that Fitzgerald or Hemingway, Faulkner or Dos Passos, had any influence at all on the men and women who wrote for Weird Tales, but I'm not sure they could have avoided the effects of living in the great and roaring milieux of the 1920s.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley