Tessida Swinges (1881-1970)-Part Two

Tessida Swinges was actually Tessida Schwinges of Brooklyn, New York. For some reason, Weird Tales misspelled her last name when it published her story, "A Mind in Shadow," in October 1925.

Tessida Schwinges had an interesting career. It's too bad we don't know more about her or that we don't have more of her writings. Her lone story for Weird Tales is the earliest evidence I have found that she was a writer. She was already forty-four years old when it was published.

Married to German-American businessman Clement Schwinges (1871-1934), Tessida attended evening classes at the City College of New York in the 1920s. She was a member of the Short Story Group at the college in 1929. Her instructor was poet Marjorie Prentiss Campbell (1882-1967), who was the daughter of a poet, Caroline Edwards Prentiss (1852-1940).

Tessida Schwinges served as president of the All Writers Club, a small group in Brooklyn, in 1929. Annie B. Kerr, later author of Clear Shining After Rain: About Americans Born Outside America (1941) and other books, was associated with that group. As early as 1933 and as late as 1950, Tessida was a member of the Blue Pencil Club, a literary society that I believe grew out of the National Amateur Press Association (NAPA). Her story "Forbidden Fruit" appeared in The Brooklynite, the journal of the local Blue Pencil Club, in March 1936. She had an article in the September or October issue of 1936 as well. In 1950, she won prizes for her prose and poetry. If there are archives of the Blue Pencil Club anywhere, maybe we could recover some of Tessida's works.

I found newspaper articles about the local Blue Pencil Club from 1933 and 1936. In addition to Tessida Schwinges, members of the club included James Morton and Rheinhart Kleiner, so she knew them both. And in that way, Tessida Schwinges is connected in a roundabout way to H.P. Lovecraft.

Rheinhart Kleiner (1892-1949) was a poet, amateur journalist, and correspondent of Lovecraft. Kleiner and Lovecraft became acquainted by mail in 1915. They met in person sometime after that, although they are supposed to have been out of touch with each other during the 1930s. Kleiner wrote several essays on his friend after Lovecraft's death in 1937.

James Ferdinand Morton, Jr. (1870-1941) was also a friend of Lovecraft. Morton was lots of other things, too, including an anarchist; an esperantist; an advocate of the single-tax system of Henry George; a member of NAPA, the Kalem Club, the Blue Pencil Club of Brooklyn, and the Bahá'í faith; and the curator of the Paterson Museum in Paterson, New Jersey. That museum is mentioned in Lovecraft's long short story "The Call of Cthulhu" (Weird Tales, Feb. 1928). After his death, Morton's widow, Pearl K. Morton, was elected vice-president of the local Blue Pencil Club. So, as a member of the club and attendee of its meetings, Tessida Schwinges knew the Mortons, as well as Kleiner. So was she ever in contact with Lovecraft? And if not, did she know of him? These are open questions.

As the wife of a native-born German, Tessida Schwinges was in a position to renounce "absolutely and forever all allegiance and fidelity" to the German Reich on April 22, 1933. This was just three months after the Nazi party assumed power in Germany. She had previously claimed German citizenship, even if she was born in America. Even as early as April 1933, the United States must have recognized the threat of Nazism.

Sometime after her husband's death in 1934, Tessida became a lecturer and leader of groups for the Brooklyn Academy of Arts and Sciences, including on the topic of astronomy. She also served as head of the current events division at the academy. Tessida (Weczerzick) Schwinges died in August 1970 at age eighty-nine and was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

I don't have a photograph of Tessida Schwinges, but I do of her husband. I think I would rather not show it, not because I have anything against him or his cause, but because a biography of a woman should be about her rather than of men. And yet I have written about him and two of her male associates, as well as about Lovecraft. (Do all things Weird Tales come back to him?) There is so much available about her husband because of his business activities, yet no one today knows of him. Maybe this becomes a principle, that some people work in the concerns of the day, while others--specifically artists--work in things that, at their best, do not know time. People in both groups are remembered. People in both are forgotten. We can only hope that works of art live on.

Tessida Schwinges' story in Weird Tales is a confessional. It opens with a boy confessing that he is a murderer. There is shock value in that kind of thing. Joyce Carol Oates realized that when she wrote Expensive People (1968). I read that book recently and was struck by the similarity. "A Mind in Shadow" also reminds me of the Alfred Hitchcock film Spellbound (1945).

Tessida Swinges' Story in Weird Tales
"A Mind in Shadow" (Oct. 1925)

 

Further Reading

A few newspaper articles, some of which have lists of writers associated with writing clubs.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley 

Howard Elsmere Fuller (1895-1985)

Author, Poet, Rural Letter Carrier
Born March 30, 1895, Worthington, Ohio
Died July 19, 1985, Baldwin County, Alabama

Howard Elsmere Fuller is a pretty easy case. I found him pretty quickly but only after finding his mother, Alice I. Fuller. As it turns out, she contributed to Weird Tales, too. And maybe her husband got in on the action as well, though I can't say that for sure. Or if the story by George Fuller came from the Fuller family, maybe it was Alice or Howard who was behind it. Or maybe Howard was behind all three Fuller stories. But then his mother was a writer for magazines, too. Anyway, I'll write first about Howard Elsmere Fuller, who contributed to the August 1925 issue of Weird Tales, one hundred years ago last month. (I'm catching up.)

Howard Elsmere Fuller was born on March 30, 1895, in Worthington, Ohio, to George Henry Fuller (1863-1944) and Alice Irene (Webb) Fuller, also known as Alice I. Clark (1870-1928). (She had lived with foster parents when she was young, thus the two different last names.) Fuller had one older brother, Clarence Clark Fuller (1893-1980). He was an engineer and inventor. I had a close call when I looked up a possible relationship of the Fuller family to Curtis G. Fuller (1912-1991), editor of Fate magazine. That Fuller's father was also named Clarence C. Fuller, but he was a different Clarence and apparently no relation at all.

The Fuller family moved to Loxley, Alabama, in 1908. Although Loxley is close to the utopian community of Fairhope, I didn't get any sense that the Fullers were utopian in their views. As we have seen, tellers of weird tales very often had an affinity for utopian and other fringe beliefs. I have written about Fairhope before. Volney George Mathison (1897-1965) lived there as a child. Ethel Morgan-Dunham (1880-1960) was buried at Fairhope. She, too, lived in Loxley, and now I wonder if she and the Fullers could have known each other. 

Howard E. Fuller served in the U.S. military from August 27, 1918, to December 24, 1918, beginning at Camp Pike in Little Rock, Arkansas. I don't know in which branch he served, but I'll assume it was in the army. The war ended less than three months after he joined. Being discharged on Christmas Eve in 1918 must have been a welcome gift to him and his family.

Fuller worked as a rural letter carrier, apparently for all of his working life. His writing was on the side. He had one story in Weird Tales, "Wolfgang Fex, Criminal" (Aug. 1925). He also had a letter published in "The Eyrie," in May 1925. He traveled to various places in the United States and went to the New York World's Fair in June 1939. The 1st World Science Fiction Convention was held a month later, from July 2 to July 4, 1939. Maybe Fuller was too early to meet any of its attendees.

An item from The Onlooker of Foley, Alabama, July 16, 1925. The newspaper botched Fuller's title and misspelled the word weird, but at least it was something.

 

Fuller was a member of the National Amateur Press Association (NAPA). In November 1953, he had a book of his poems published, Excursions in Arcady. A better claim to fame was his authorship of a poem, "To Edgar Allan Poe," published in Contemporary American Poets, edited by Horace C. Baker (Boston, 1928). I have these four lines from the website of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore:

With a haunting, dreamy sadness
Is bared the crytic [sic] soul;
With a rhythmic rune of madness.
Thy melancholy soul.

You can read the whole poem on a website called Poetry Explorer by clicking here. 

Howard Elsmere Fuller died on July 19, 1985, in Baldwin County, Alabama, at age ninety. He was buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Loxley like his parents before him.

Howard Elsmere Fuller's Letter & Story in Weird Tales
Letter to "The Eyrie" (May 1925)
"Wolfgang Fex, Criminal" (Aug. 1925)

Further Reading
Only a few newspaper items, plus his poem, "To Edgar Allan Poe."

Next: Alice I. Fuller

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

"The Eyrie," October 1923

There are only a few letters in the October 1923 issue of Weird Tales, but some are long. H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) wrote again for the second time in two months. There are three excerpts from his long letter in this issue, including his first verse published in Weird Tales. Letter writers were:

• An Old Fashioned Woman of Hayward, California, a discerning reader with a good memory who noticed the similarity of:

"The Invisible Terror" by Hugh Thomason (dates unknown) in Weird Tales, June 1923, to "The Damned Thing" by Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), which was reprinted in Weird Tales in September 1923;

"The Gray Death" by Loual B. Sugarman (1894-1965) in Weird Tales, June 1923, to "The Silver Menace" by Murray Leinster (1896-1975) in The Thrill Book, September 1 and September 15, 1919; and

"Penelope" by Vincent Starrett (1886-1974) in Weird Tales, May 1923, to "Phoebe" by O. Henry (1862-1910) in Everybody's Magazine, November 1907.

• J. L. of Jersey City, New Jersey.

• Richard P. "Dick" Tooker (1902-1988) of Minneapolis, Minnesota, who, like Lovecraft, had his second letter in two months and would have more--plus a short story--in future issues.

• Joel Shoemaker (1862-1937) of Seattle, Washington. Called "Reverend," he was an Indian fighter, newspaperman, politician, public speaker, and conservationist. A month after his letter was published, Shoemaker got into a tussle with Morris S. Brown, Seattle's "tallest policeman," who was trying to kidnap Shoemaker's three-year-old grandson, Billings Brown. Shoemaker's daughter, Mrs. Nannie S. Brown, fired a pistol at her ex-husband, while Joel Shoemaker "belabored his victim with an old hickory cane he has carried for 30 or 40 years." Brown should have known better than to mess with an old Kentuckian carrying a hickory cane, or with that old Kentuckian's wife, Luella Billings Shoemaker, who "rushed" the pistol to her daughter, ready for the firing. You can read all about it in "Brown Facing Prison Term" in the Seattle Star, November 28, 1923, page 3.

• Lee Torpie of San Francisco, California.

• Dr. Henry C. Murphy (1862-1932) of Brooklyn, New York. He was a long-practicing medical doctor whose father was also a medical doctor. In response to his letter, editor Edwin M. Baird wrote:

The foregoing was written by Dr. Henry C. Murphy of Brooklyn; and, before we comment upon it, we rise to remark that WEIRD TALES seems to offer a special appeal to physicians and surgeons. They like to read our sort of stories, and they like to write 'em. There is scarcely a day that we don't get at least one weird story written by a doctor. Doctors, it seems, encounter some weird adventures.

I have written before about medical doctors. Very often, my writing about doctors has gone along with my writing about psychopaths and serial killers. Click on the menu items on the right to read more.

• H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), who wrote a long letter and excerpted two of his own poems therein.

H.P. Lovecraft started out the year 1923 with the publication of his serialized novelette "The Lurking Fear" in the magazine Home Brew. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database lists nine issues of Home Brew, five published in 1922 and four in 1923. "The Lurking Fear" ran in all four of the issues for 1923, from January through April.

I wondered the other day whether "Dagon" was Lovecraft's first illustrated story in a national magazine. I guess it depends on what you think of as a national magazine, but "The Lurking Fear" in Home Brew was also illustrated, by Clark Ashton Smith of all people.

Home Brew was edited and published in New York by George Julian Houtain (1884-1945) and his second wife, Elsie Dorothy (Grant) McLaughlin Houtain (1889-?). They were members of the National Amateur Press Association (NAPA), and she served as the second female president of the organization. I have always thought of Home Brew as an amateur publication and, as such, not a national magazine. On the other hand, "America's Zippiest Pocket Magazine" was available as far west as Cincinnati.

I have read a reference to Home Brew that it was discontinued in 1924. Lovecraft was published in its pages in 1922-1923. Weird Tales must have come along at just the right time for him. "The Lurking Fear," by the way, was reprinted in Weird Tales in June 1928.

Note the blurb on the cover regarding CAS: "the Artist Who Illustrated Edgar Allan Poe."

Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Farnsworth Wright (1888-1940)-A Short Short Story

Newspaper Reporter, Soldier, Translator, Author, Editor, Music Critic
Born July 29, 1888, Santa Barbara, California
Died June 12, 1940, Jackson Heights, New York

I have stayed away from writing a biography of Farnsworth Wright. Luckily, I found a source that will allow me to go on avoiding that task. My source is a biographical article in a series called "Titans of Science Fiction," printed in the fanzine Science Fiction Digest, Combined with The Time Traveler, in Volume 1, Number 7, from March 1933. The editor was Maurice Z. Ingher; associate editors were Mortimer Weisinger, Raymond A. Palmer, and Julius Schwartz; and contributing editors were Forrest J. Ackerman and Henry Schalansky. The article itself was written anonymously. Wright may have himself been the author. I found this issue of Science Fiction Digest in a most timely way, on Saturday last week. It's from the collection of Margaret B. Nicholas of Bartlett and Marietta, Ohio. I found it at the same place as her larger collection, much of which I purchased last year.

TITANS OF SCIENCE FICTION

FARNSWORTH WRIGHT

    Editor of Weird Tales since November, 1924, was born in California forty-five years ago. Has English, Scotch, and French blood in him. Lived in San Francisco until 1906 when the earthquake 'threw' him out.

   Was bitten early with the editorial bug. When attending a San Francisco High School, he published an amateur magazine, "The Laurel," which he edited, wrote, and printed himself on a hand press belonging to a friend.

    Was educated at the University of Nevada and the University of Washington. While at the latter he was managing editor of their daily paper. Had to work his way through college. Spent one year surveying, one summer canvassing books, another summer as entomologist for the British Columbia Hop-Company, campaigning against the hop-fleas and the hop-lice.

    When the United State got into the Big Scrap he went to France as a private in the infantry. Was acquainted with French well enough to act as a French interpreter in the A.E.F. for one year.

    Returned to resume life as a newspaper reporter in Chicago. Was the music critic for the Chicago Herald and Examiner (the Hearst Morning paper in the Windy City) for two years.

    Wrote stories and read manuscripts for Weird Tales when Edwin Baird was editor from 1923-1924, and later became its editor when the Popular Fiction Publishing Company bought the magazine in 1924.

    He is the author of about 40 stories altogether, but story-writing is merely an avocation with him. Has written but one science fiction story, "An Adventure in the Fourth Dimension," an uproarious satire on interplanetary stories and science fiction in general. It was reprinted twice: in the Ten Story Book, and again with "The Moon Terror."

    It is rumored that Mr. Wright writes under the nom-de-plume of Francis Hard, whose stories and poems have appeared in Weird Tales and Oriental Stories--but he prefers not to say anything about it.

    His favorite relaxations are chess and swimming, he prefers to read books dealing with science and history. His favorite poet is Keats, favorite story-writer is Alphonse Daudet, but thinks William Morris' "A King' Lesson" is the best short story he's read. Likes to see Mickey Mouse on the screen in preference to anyone else, and considers Master Robert Wright, age three, his favorite hobby.

* * *

It goes on from there, but that's enough for now. "Master Robert Wright," by the way, was Wright's son, Robert Farnsworth Wright (1930-1993). How strange it is to hold a publication from ninety years ago in one's hand, a publication that was new and fresh when a long-dead man was just a three-year-old boy.

"Francis Hard" was in fact a nom-de-plume of Farnsworth Wright. (Hard was his mother's maiden name.) He began using that nom-de-plume only after he had assumed the role of editor of Weird Tales in November 1924. In all, Wright had five stories in Weird Tales from March through November 1923, plus three short stories and five poems in Weird Tales, Oriental Stories, and The Magic Carpet Magazine from November 1924 to October 1937. So there was precedent for an editor to use a pseudonym while still having his works printed in Weird Tales. Maybe Lamont Buchanan, later associate editor, availed himself of that practice during the 1940s and '50s.

Farnsworth Wright's Stories in Weird Tales

• "The Closing Hand" (Mar. 1923)
• "The Snake Fiend" (Apr. 1923)
• "The Teak-Wood Shrine" (Sept. 1923)
• "An Adventure in the Fourth Dimension" (Oct. 1923; reprinted in The Moon Terror [1923] and in The Best of Weird Tales: 1923 [1997])
• "Poisoned" (Nov. 1923)

Stories & Poems by Farnsworth Wright Writing as Francis Hard in Weird Tales, Oriental Stories, and The Magic Carpet Magazine

• "The Great Panjandrum" in Weird Tales (short story, Nov. 1924)
• "The Dark Pool" in Weird Tales (poem, Apr. 1925)
• "The Death Angel" in Weird Tales (poem, Sept. 1925)
• "Two Crows" in Weird Tales (poem, Jan. 1925)
• "The Evening Star" in Weird Tales (poem, Mar. 1926) 
• "The White Queen" in Oriental Stories (short story, Oct./Nov. 1930)
• "The Picture of Judas" in The Magic Carpet Magazine (short story, Apr. 1933)
• "After Two Nights of the Ear-ache" in Weird Tales (poem, Oct. 1937)

Farnsworth Wright's Story:

"The Closing Hand" is a very short story of only two pages. It takes place in an old house at night, with two sisters lying together in an upstairs bedroom and the younger of them talking about how the place might be haunted. The older sister is more level-headed and proceeds to fall asleep. There are sounds downstairs. The younger sister wakes the older, who goes to investigate. She is gone for too long. A presence comes into the room and . . .

"The Closing Hand" is written more or less at a high school level. It begins as a haunted house story and ends as a simple crime story. It reads like a sequence from a modern horror movie.

In its issue of September 1, 1922, the Chicago Tribune asked the man on the street, "What do you think of Health commissioner's Bundesen's 'public' health plan?" Farnworth Wright, then aged thirty-three, provided this answer.

Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Joseph Payne Brennan (1918-1990)-Part Five

Brennan & Lovecraft

Joseph Payne Brennan (1918-1990) was old enough to have corresponded with and even to have met H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). Like Lovecraft's eventual literary executor, Robert H. Barlow (1918-1951), he could have, as a teenager, entered into Lovecraft's circle. But he didn't. Brennan was also old enough and probably good enough and talented enough to have been published in Weird Tales in the 1940s, possibly even in the 1930s. But he wasn't. Instead, he went his own way and seems to have worked almost in isolation for years. One thing to keep in mind here is that Brennan went to work before his twentieth birthday in order to support his family. He also lost three years of his writing life while serving in the U.S. Army in Europe during and after World War II. We can wonder about what might have been, but that doesn't do much good. Instead, we have what we have from Joseph Payne Brennan, which is no small thing at all.

Brennan was quiet and reserved. In photographs, the look on his face is the same, no matter when the photograph might have been taken: serious, unsmiling, possibly sad, maybe a little bit grim. Many of his poems are of sadness and loss. Like Lovecraft, he was filled with nostalgia, for an ideal time in the past, especially for a time before his family went into decline. He said:

I'm attracted to the Victorian period, I think, because it had at least the illusion of stability and permanence. [. . .] My grandmother here--my father's parents flourished in that time. They had a large, happy, successful family. They were relatively wealthy and successful and since I personally have known mostly poverty, I suppose I look back and wish I could have been in that prior generation. You know, they had a big house and a maid, all the amenities. I am not sure how my grandfather achieved all this but he did. And also it seems to me that since that generation, more deprivation and trouble and unhappiness has come to succeeding generations. (1)

I have written before on the idea that weird fiction is about the past and looks to the past, with loss and longing and nostalgia. Brennan's sentiments are as good as any in bearing out that idea.

Brennan was a bibliographer of H.P. Lovecraft, an essayist and poet on him, too. Here is a list of his Lovecraft-related works:

• A Select Bibliography of H. P. Lovecraft (1952)
• H. P. Lovecraft: A Bibliography (1952)
• H. P. Lovecraft: An Evaluation (1955)
• "H. P. L.: An Informal Commentary" in Howard Phillips Lovecraft Memorial Symposium (1958)
• "Lovecraft's 'Brick Row'" in Macabre (Summer 1959)
• "Lines to H. P. Lovecraft" (poem) in Macabre (Summer, 1959), reprinted in The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces (Arkham House, 1959) 
• "Time and H.P.L." in Macabre (Summer 1960)
• "Three Footnotes on H.P. Lovecraft" in Macabre (Summer 1961)
• "A Haunter of the Night" in HPL (1972)
• "Lovecraft on the Subway" in Macabre (1973)
• "Lovecraft and the O'Brien Annuals" in Macabre (1976) 

This compilation is from the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb) and includes only those works that refer to Lovecraft by name in their titles. There may be others.

Like Lovecraft, Brennan was a writer of stories, poems, and non-fiction. He was involved in amateur press and small press and was a prolific correspondent, including with August Derleth (1909-1971). Brennan had at least one story, "The Feaster from Afar," in the Cthulhu Mythos. It appeared in the collection The Disciples of Cthulhu, published by DAW Books in 1976. Like Lovecraft, he was a New Englander and had a strong sense of place. Brennan said of himself, "I'm more apt to be intrigued by a landscape than by a personality." (2) The same deemphasis on personality or characterization is also in Lovecraft.

Brennan wrote about nature in a more sympathetic way than did Lovecraft, I think. Although both men were urbanites, Brennan spent his childhood summers on his grandparents' farm in East Hartland, Connecticut. Although he wrote of the old New England devil-in-the-woods, Brennan doesn't seem to have been alienated from nature, nor to have been squeamish about the forces and ways of nature. On the other hand, threats supposedly represented by nature have become clichés in our popular culture. It seems likely to me that they were no less clichés in Lovecraft's time. And so Lovecraft and others personified--or demonized--nature, such as with the whip-poor-will, a bird, a mere bird of the gloaming and of the tangled woods. It's worth noting that Brennan had at least two works referring to Nietzsche, a poem by that title in his 1949 collection Heart of Earth, and "Zarathustra at the Gate," from the same collection. A look at Lovecraft and Nietzsche might be worth the time spent. Or has someone already done the looking?

One last thing in regards to Brennan and Lovecraft: like Lovecraft, Brennan has his papers at the John Hay Library at Brown University.

To be continued . . .

Notes

(1) From "Etchings & Odysseys Interview: Joseph Payne Brennan" in Etchings & Odysseys #7 (1985), pages 58-59.

(2) From the same source, page 59.

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Anthony F. Klinkner (1880-1953)

Poet, Editor, Reporter
Born July 10, 1880, Cascade, Iowa
Died May 13, 1953, Dubuque, Iowa

In the centennial week of Dubuque, Iowa, in August 1933, Anthony Klinkner was awarded as the first poet laureate of the state of Iowa by the Poet Laureate League of America. The award was made "'in appreciation of the commendable interest and activity he has shown in the advancement of poetry and literature in the state of Iowa, and in recognition of his excellence in poetry composition'." (1) Klinkner had just turned fifty-three and had been writing poems for a quarter century. His poems had been broadcast over the radio and used in school programs. According to the Encyclopedia Dubuque, "Klinkner's articles and verse appeared in more than three hundred Catholic and secular newspapers throughout North America, France, and Ireland."

Anthony Ferdinand Timothy Klinkner was born on July 10, 1880, in Cascade, Iowa, to two German immigrants, John H. Klinkner (1851-1927) and Margaret F. (Knippling) Klinkner (1850-1936). He graduated from St. Mary's High School in Cascade, Iowa. On June 27, 1905, he married Margaret Wallace (1882-?) in Farley, Iowa. They had two children.

A summary of Anthony Klinkner's résumé from The American Catholics Who's Who, 1946-1947, page 234:

• Apprentice, Cascade Courier, 1896
• Editor, Young America, 1897-1903
• Member, United and National Amateur Press Associations, ca. 1897-1903 (from another source than Who's Who)
• Reporter, Dubuque Telegraph-Herald, 1903
• Editor, Farley News, 1904-1910
• With Waukegon Republican and Cascade Pioneer, 1912-1919
• With the Catholic Printing Company, Dubuque, from 1919
• State and fiction editor, Catholic Daily Tribune, Dubuque, from 1926
• Named first poet laureate of Iowa by the Poet Laureate League of America, 1933
• Contributing editor, The Circle poetry magazine
• Member, Catholic Poetry Society of America and other Catholic organizations

He wrote one poem in Weird Tales. Here is a list, far from complete, of his credits:

• "The Sign" in The Sign (Sept. 1921)
• Ten Nights in Fairyland (1921)
• "The Dead Are in the Hillside Clay" in Weird Tales (Jan. 1933)
• My Baby: Petals, Selected Poems (Dubuque, 1935)

Anthony Klinkner died on May 13, 1953, at age seventy-two and was buried at Mount Calvary Cemetery in Dubuque.

Note

(1) Quoted in the Mason City Globe-Gazette, Mason City, Iowa, Aug. 3, 1933, p. 2.

Some poems by Anthony F.T. Klinkner:

Alleluia!
The Christ who works in offices
Is weary of his load,
Sum Total is his torture
And Hurry is his goad.

From Pilate's hall to Caiaphas
They drive him to and fro,
And only He Who is a Sign
His agony will know.

They crown his brow with wrinkles deep
To profit find or loss,
With price and cost they load him down,
The Ledger is his cross.

Each day he goes to Golgotha
To meekly do their will,
They look at him with eyes of scorn
On crucifixion hill.

The Christ who works in offices
For masters stern and grim,
Looks from his window prison bars
To hear the Easter hymn!

Baby Lindbergh
The empty arms of his mother will ache 
For the feel of his velvet cheek, 
The loving heart of his father will break 
For no more will his red lips speak. 
And over the hills with angels to roam 
Where no sin of the world may mar, 
He waits in the halls of heavenly home 
Where all of God's little ones are. 
--from The Catholic Tribune, May 14, 1932. 

Armistice Day
Endless crosses row on row
Tell of boys we used to know 
In the golden long ago. 

They were young and they were brave, 
Freely their young lives they gave, 
For oblivion of the grave. 

Underneath the skies of France, 
Battle-scar and battle-chance, 
Made of death a circumstance. 

America their native land, 
Saw them march to stirring band,
Saw them leave for foreign strand. 

Deathless they in valor sleep, 
We their memory sacred keep, 
While the long years onward sweep. 
--from The Catholic Tribune, Nov. 10, 1937

Anthony Klinkner's Poem in Weird Tales

"The Dead Are in the Hillside Clay" (Jan. 1933)

Further Reading

There isn't much to read about Anthony Klinkner on the Internet, but links are embedded in the main body of text above.

Original text copyright 2016, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

John Giunta (1920-1970)-Part 1

Aka Jay Gee
Illustrator, Comic Book Artist, Science Fiction Fan, Author, Editor, Publisher, Art Director, Reviewer
Born June 5, 1920, New York, New York
Died November 6, 1970, New York, New York

John Giunta was born on June 5, 1920, in New York City, probably in Brooklyn or Queens. His parents were Italian immigrants. (The surname Giunta is the Italian equivalent of the Spanish word junta.) Giunta's mother was named Jenny, a nickname for Giovanna. According to David Saunders on his website Field Guide to Wild American Pulp Artists, Giunta's father was Francesco Antonio Giunta. His father may have been Thomas G. Giunta. I think both worked in the garment industry. In 1940, John Giunta was at home in Brooklyn with his mother. He was just nineteen years old but already working as a commercial artist. If Thomas G. Giunta was indeed the father of John Giunta, then there were other Giunta children: Anna, Antonio, and Marie E. Giunta. I haven't found John Giunta in any other census except 1940, nor in any other public records. I don't even know his date of birth.

If John Giunta has any measure of fame today, it's mostly for his collaboration with Frank Frazetta on Frazetta's first published comic book story, "Snowman," from Tally Ho #1 (Dec. 1944). Frazetta was of course a teenaged prodigy and would go on to great fame in the 1960s and beyond. Giunta, who in 1944 was in his mid-twenties, was already a comic book veteran, having started in the business in the late 1930s. However, if you look for biographical information on him in any of the histories of comic books, you will come up empty. On the other hand, if you begin with two sources on science fiction fandom, you will find some interesting tidbits on Giunta's early career as an artist, editor, and publisher.

Science fiction fandom began in the late 1920s with the letters column of Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories. During the next decade or so, fans began corresponding with each other, organizing clubs, and issuing their own hectographed and mimeographed magazines. New York City was an epicenter of fandom, Brooklyn and Queens in particular. Much of what we know of early fandom comes from the men who were there and who in later years recounted their experiences. The Immortal Storm: A History of Science Fiction Fandom by Sam Moskowitz (1954) and All Our Yesterdays by Harry Warner, Jr. (1969) are two invaluable sources about a kind of golden age that slipped away, just as youth slips away.

Like other artists and writers in his field, John Giunta gained entry into comic books because of his interest in science fiction and fantasy and because of his activity in fandom. (1) According to Sam Moskowitz, Cosmic Tales, issued by New York fans James V. Taurasi, Jack Gillespie, and Robert G. Thompson beginning in 1937, "was the magazine which introduced artists John Giunta and Jack Agnew to the field." (2) Giunta would have been just sixteen or seventeen years old at the time. Taurasi passed editorship to the sister-and-brother team of Gertrude and Louis Kuslan with the September 1938 issue of Cosmic Tales. John Giunta took over for one issue, dated 1940 (Vol. 1, No. 2). By then Giunta had already published his own fanzine, Amazing Wonder Tales, the one and only issue of which was dated August 1938. Giunta subsequently changed the title to Scienti-Tales (Mar./Apr. 1939). He also issued an amateur press magazine called Scientitale Publication. (3)

Earlier that summer--on June 5, 1938, his eighteenth birthday--Giunta had attended the first meeting of the newly reorganized Greater New York Chapter of the Science Fiction League. Sixteen fans were present, including, in the words of Sam Moskowitz, "two amateur artists, John Giunta and Daniel C. Burford." (4) Jack Rubinson and William Sykora were also there. The next event in a chronicle of Giunta's fan activity was the publication of the first mimeographed edition of Fantascience Digest, edited by Robert A. Madle, in January 1939. Staff writers on the magazine included the two aforementioned historians of fandom, Harry Warner, Jr., and Sam Moskowitz. The list of contributors to Fantascience Digest is nothing to sniff at: Henry Kuttner, Ray Bradbury, Ralph Milne Farley, Donald A. Wollheim, and the young John Giunta. (5) That same month, Giunta had his first published credit in a professional science fiction magazine (or prozine), a letter in Startling Stories.

To be continued . . .

Notes
(1) Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster for example, were keen fans of science fiction and published their own fanzines, Cosmic Stories (1929) and Science Fiction (1933). They also created Superman, a character that had originated in pulp-fictional form. Other science fiction fan artists included Ronald Clyne and Hannes Bok, both of whom contributed to Weird Tales. See All Our Yesterdays by Harry Warner, Jr. (1969), p. 91
(2) The Immortal Storm: A History of Science Fiction Fandom by Sam Moskowitz (1954), p. 135.
(3) "Death of an Artist: John Giunta--A Personalized Obituary" by Sam Moskowitz, Luna Monthly No. 20 (Jan. 1971), pp. 1-2.
(4) Moskowitz, p. 171.
(5) Moskowitz, p. 200.

Amazing Wonder Tales #1, August 1938, a science fiction fanzine with cover art by John Giunta.

Cosmic Tales, July 1941 (Vol. 1, No. 4), with cover art by Giunta. 

Thanks to Christopher M. O'Brien for providing Sam Moskowitz's obituary of John Giunta.
I acknowledge David Saunders in his research on John Giunta. Click here to read what Mr. Saunders wrote.

Updated on February 1, 2021.

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley