A. Merritt (1884-1943)-Part Two

So the careers of A. Merritt and Francis Stevens have some similarities and possibly some connections. The two authors may have met early in their careers, when she was working as a secretary at the University of Pennsylvania and he was a journalist at the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Sunday Supplement and/or The Sunday American Magazine, forerunner to The American Weekly. (1) Both had their first stories published in All-Story Weekly in 1917, and both wrote almost exclusively for the Munsey magazines (Argosy and All-Story) for several years. There was even a time when readers thought that "Francis Stevens" was a pseudonym of A. Merritt. They were only half right, for "Francis Stevens" was actually the pseudonym of Gertrude Barrows Bennett. One difference between Merritt and Stevens is that he became well known and very wealthy. She was neither.

It's reasonable to assume that Merritt was in contact with Gertrude Barrows Bennett. His first story in Famous Fantastic Mysteries or Fantastic Novels Magazine--two titles that reprinted stories from the old Munsey magazines--was "The Moon Pool," the lead story in the first issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries, dated September-October 1939. Stevens' first story reprinted in those magazines was "Behind the Curtain" in Famous Fantastic Mysteries for January 1940. I have lost track of the source that says Merritt persuaded Mary Gnaedinger, the editor of Famous Fantastic Mysteries and Fantastic Novels Magazine, to reprint Francis Stevens' stories. I wonder now if he let Gertrude Barrows Bennett know about these new markets for her stories or if he secured payment for her for their reprinting. In any case, A. Merritt died of a heart attack on August 21, 1943, at his winter home in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida. Gertrude Barrows Bennett followed him to the grave in 1948. Nonetheless, Mary Gnaedinger continued reprinting their work. Six of Gertrude's thirteen stories were reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Fantastic Novels Magazine, or Famous Fantastic Mysteries Combined with Fantastic Novels Magazine from 1940 to 1950. At least thirteen of Merritt's stories were so honored. His were also reprinted in Amazing Stories, Avon Fantasy Reader, Fantastic, Leaves, Satellite Science Fiction, Science and Invention, Science Fiction Digest, and Super Science and Fantastic Stories, as well as many collections and anthologies over the years.

Both A. Merritt and Francis Stevens had just one story published in Weird Tales, both in the 1920s. Merritt's contribution, "The Woman of the Wood" (Aug. 1926), was voted by readers the most popular story in the issue in which it appeared, for the entire year of 1926, and of all stories published from 1924 to 1940. It was reprinted in January 1934 and was again voted the most popular story in that issue. (2) Stevens' lone contribution, "Sunfire" (July-Sept. 1923) was published before readers were polled for their favorite stories. With it, her writing career came to an end, while Merritt's continued to the end of his life, although his last story published in his lifetime was in 1936, shortly before he became editor of The American Weekly in 1937 (3).

As further evidence of Merritt's popularity, in 1938, Argosy polled its readers for their favorite story in the fifty-eight-year history of the magazine. The winner was "The Ship of Ishtar" from 1924. Argosy proceeded to reprint Merritt's story and confessed that it had paid him the highest word-rate of any its authors.  The editor wrote: "This only proves he was worth it!" (4) More than a decade later, in December 1949, Merritt had a magazine published with his name in the title, A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine. Mary Gnaedinger was the editor for five issues dated December 1949 to October 1950, when the magazine came to an end. Vargo Statten Science Fiction Magazine (1954) and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (1977-present) later fell into the category of magazines named for authors.

A. Merritt was and is a very popular writer, and his stories have seldom if ever been out of print. According to Sam Moskowitz, Avon Publications estimated that its re-printings of Merritt's stories had sold four million copies as of 1959. (5) Merritt's stories have been reprinted many times in many languages, including English, of course, as well as French, Italian, and German. They have also been adapted to the movies in Seven Footprints to Satan (1929) and two adaptations of "Burn, Witch, Burn!", The Devil Doll (1936) and Muñecos infernales (1961). He is supposed to have been an influence on Francis Stevens and H.P. Lovecraft, or they were an influence on him, or each other, or some combination of influences, one upon another, for which no one seems to have offered very much evidence. (6) Suffice it to say, Merritt's stories "are among the most famous titles in the canon of fantastic literature." (7) A. Merritt was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 1999.

A. Merritt's Story, Essay, & Letters in Weird Tales

"The Moon Pool" (Aug. 1926; reprinted Jan. 1934)

Letter to "The Eyrie" (Oct. 1929)

Letter to "The Eyrie" (Oct. 1934)

Letter to "The Eyrie" (Nov. 1935)

"How We Found Circe" (Winter 1973; originally in The Story Behind the Story, 1942)

Further Reading

There is much to read about A. Merritt on the Internet and in those ancient artifacts known as books, including:

• "The Marvelous A. Merritt" in Explorers of the Infinite by Sam Moskowitz (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1963), pp. 189-207.
• Introduction by Sam Moskowitz to "The Moon Pool" by A. Merritt in Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "The Scientific Romance " in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), pp. 137-138.
• A. Merritt: Reflections in the Moon Pool by Sam Moskowitz (1985)

Notes

(1) Gertrude Barrows Bennett had arrived in Philadelphia in 1909 or 1910, either newly married or newly widowed. A. Merritt left Philadelphia in 1912 for New York City, but I can't say that he cut ties to his former city. It's worth noting that one of the characters in Stevens' story "Sunfire" (1923) is a "war-correspondent and a writer of magazine tales." Named Alcot Waring, he is described as a "vast mountain of flesh . . . obese, freckle-faced, with small, round, very bright and clear gray eyes" (The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy, p. 348). I have seen two photographs of Merritt but have never read a description of him. He doesn't appear to have been a small man, but he may not have been Alcot Waring-sized either. Like Waring, Merritt spent some time in Latin America, at least as a visitor and maybe as an explorer.
(2) Merritt also had an essay in the magazine, "How We Found Circe," in a later incarnation, Winter 1973.
(3) At the time, The American Weekly, the Sunday magazine of the Hearst newspaper chain, claimed "the largest circulation of any periodical in the world" according to Sam Moskowitz. (Source: Moskowitz's introduction to "How We Found Circe" in Weird Tales, Winter 1973, p. 26.) Considering his new responsibilities, we can't blame Merritt for not writing in the field of fantasy after 1937.

(4) Quoted in "The Marvelous A. Merritt" by Sam Moskowitz in Explorers of the Infinite (1963), p. 190.
(5) Explorers of the Infinite, p. 206.
(6) In "The Moon Pool" by Merritt (published June 22, 1918), there is a "moon-door." In The Heads of Cerberus by Stevens (published August-October 1919), there is a "moon-gate." If these things are evidence of influence, one upon another, then Merritt would seem the influence in this case. But how far does anyone want to go with something like that?

(7) Sam Moskowitz in his introduction to "The Moon Pool" by A. Merritt in Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "The Scientific Romance " in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920 (1970), p. 137.

Abraham Merritt (1884-1943)

Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

A. Merritt (1884-1943)-Part One

Aka W. Fenimore
Author, Journalist, Editor, Poet
Born January 20, 1884, Beverly, New Jersey
Died August 21, 1943, Indian Rocks Beach, Florida

Abraham Grace Merritt was a contemporary of Francis Stevens--Gertrude Barrows Bennett--and he was her champion, the man who persuaded the editor of Famous Fantastic Mysteries and Fantastic Novels Magazine to begin reprinting her stories in the early 1940s. Born on January 20, 1884, A. Merritt was just four months younger than Gertrude Barrows. His first story in the field of fantasy, "Through the Dragon Glass," was published in the November 24, 1917, issue of All-Story Weekly. Francis Stevens' first story, "The Nightmare," had been published just seven months before in the same magazine, in the issue of April 14, 1917. Like Stevens, Merritt was not an extremely prolific author of fantasy. If I have done my research correctly, then I count his total output as seventeen short stories and serials published from 1917 to 1936. That list is short enough to appear here in its entirety:

• "Through the Dragon Glass" (All-Story Weekly, Nov. 24, 1917)
• "The People of the Pit" (All-Story Weekly, Jan. 5, 1918)
• "The Moon Pool" (All-Story Weekly, June 22, 1918)
• "The Conquest of the Moon Pool" (six-part serial in All-Story Weekly, Feb. 15-Mar. 22, 1919)
• "Three Lines of Old French" (All-Story Weekly, Aug. 9, 1919)
• "The Metal Monster" (eight-part serial in Argosy All-Story Weekly, Aug. 7-Sept. 25, 1920)
• "The Pool of the Stone God" as by W. Fenimore (American Weekly, Sept. 23, 1923)
• "The Ship of Ishtar" (six-part serial in Argosy All-Story Weekly, Nov. 8-Dec. 13, 1924)
• "Seven Footprints to Satan" (five-part serial in Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 2-July 30, 1927)
• "The Face in the Abyss" (Argosy All-Story Weekly, Sept. 8, 1923)
• "The Woman of the Wood" (Weird Tales, Aug. 1926)
• "The Snake Mother" (seven-part serial in Argosy, Oct. 25-Dec. 6, 1930)
• "Dwellers in the Mirage" (six-part serial in Argosy, Jan. 23-Feb. 27, 1932)
• "Burn, Witch, Burn!" (six-part serial in Argosy, Oct. 22-Nov. 26, 1932)
• "The Drone Man" (Fantasy Magazine, Sept. 1934)
• "Creep, Shadow!" (seven-part serial in Argosy, Sept. 8-Oct. 20, 1934)
• "Rhythm of the Spheres" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Oct. 1936)

All of those stories have been reprinted multiple times, and the serials have been reprinted as whole novels. "The Pool of the Stone God," from American Weekly, was Merritt's only story published under a name not his own. His use of a pseudonym is understandable considering that Merritt was at the time on the staff of American Weekly. In 1937 he became its editor.

In addition, A. Merritt contributed to two round-robin stories:

• "Cosmos" (seventeen-part round-robin serial in Science Fiction Digest/Fantasy Magazine, July 1933-Jan. 1935) (1)
• "The Challenge from Beyond" (five-part round-robin story in Fantasy Magazine, Sept. 1935)

And he wrote a number of stories, essays, fragments, and outlines that were published after his death or fleshed out by others and, again, published posthumously. These include:

• "The Fox Woman," a story completed by Hannes Bok and published in 1946
• "The Black Wheel," a story completed by Hannes Bok and published in 1947
• "The White Road" and "When Old Gods Awake," two fragments published in The Fox Woman and Other Stories in 1949
• "How We Found Circe," an essay reprinted in Weird Tales, Winter 1973

Finally, A. Merritt was the author of many poems and pieces of non-fiction published in science fiction and fantasy magazines over the years. These include three letters to "The Eyrie," October 1929, October 1934, and November 1935. I should warn you that if you begin looking into Merritt's writing credits, you could easily lose your way. If I have left out any stories or have made any mistakes, I hope someone will offer corrections.

To be continued . . .

Note

(1) Merritt's chapter of "Cosmos," "The Last Poet and the Robots" (Part 11, Apr. 1934), was, according to a quote from Mike Ashley on Wikipedia, "voted the most popular [and] a gem of a story."

Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Francis Stevens (1883-1948)

Pseudonym of Gertrude Barrows Bennett
Author, Office Worker
Born September 18, 1883, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Died 1948, California

Francis Stevens has been called "the woman who invented dark fantasy." (1) That would seem a significant accomplishment for a pseudonymous author who wrote in isolation and who was largely forgotten in the decades after her last story was published. Stevens is also supposed to have been an influence upon A. Merritt and H.P. Lovecraft. Again, if that were true, it would seem of some importance. Yet no one seems to have made a convincing case in her favor, either as an innovator or as an influence upon her peers. But then no one seems to have defined "dark fantasy" in any satisfactory way either. It's as if we were to claim that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, but we haven't decided yet just what is a light bulb.

Those are only two of the many problems in the case of Francis Stevens. The problem of her biography precedes them. Thankfully, some of the questions about who she was, where she came from, and how she lived have been answered. We can thank Randal A. Everts for a good deal of that information. Even so, erroneous information survives, in print and on line, even in so-called scholarly works. For example, was her middle name Mabel or Myrtle? If she was a writer of significance, why should there be any confusion? Do we wonder whether Lovecraft's middle name was Phillips or Poe's was Allan? For another example, on what date and in what place did she die? If we're talking about an important writer of the twentieth century, we should know these things. A second problem--the unsolvable problem of the disorderly human mind--is that no one on line seems to have provided a simple, complete, chronological list of her works with their original titles and their original dates of publication. I hope to have corrected that in the list provided below. If I have made any errors or omissions, I hope someone will let me know.

Francis Stevens was the pseudonym of Gertrude Barrows Bennett, a native Minnesotan who worked in an office during the day to support herself, her orphaned daughter, and her invalid mother, and in her spare time composed tales of fantasy. She wrote thirteen stories published from 1904 to 1923. The first, "The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar," is an outlier in two ways. First, it was separated from the others by thirteen years. Second, it was published under a semblance of her real name, that is, as by G.M. Barrows. Francis Stevens' reputation rests instead on a dozen stories and serials published from April 1917 to September 1923, a mere six and a half years. All appeared in All-Story Weekly, Argosy, The Thrill Book, People's Favorite Magazine, and Weird Tales. After the publication of "Sunfire" in Weird Tales in the summer of 1923, Francis Stevens fell silent.

The stories of Francis Stevens were rediscovered in the early 1940s and have been reprinted many times since. Eight appeared in The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy, published in 2004. The introduction, by Gary Hoppenstand, is entitled "Francis Stevens: The Woman Who Invented Dark Fantasy," but it opens with a discussion of A. Merritt (1884-1943), H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), and other subjects. Stevens herself doesn't make an appearance until the middle of the second page, and then only in these three sentences:

The person who may stake the best claim at creating the new genre of dark fantasy is Francis Stevens (1883-1948). It is readily apparent to those who survey Steven's pulp magazine novels and short stories that her fiction was greatly admired by Merritt and Lovecraft. Both authors expanded and reworked in their own fiction the dark fantasy narrative elements that Stevens first developed and employed in her writings . . . . (p. x)

Each one of those sentences makes an extraordinary claim in need of supporting evidence, evidence that is not always forthcoming. But there is a more subtle problem at work here, one that is central to the case of Francis Stevens. That problem has nothing to do with her. Instead, it has to do with how she is seen and interpreted. Why for example, in a book of her stories, is she in third place after two male authors and not even mentioned until page two of the introduction? Here is another example:

Francis Stevens was the most gifted woman writer of science fiction and science-fantasy between Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and C.L. Moore. She possessed, in addition to a natural storytelling sense, a flair for creating images of sheer imagination that come to life from the printed word, a facility second only to that of A. Merritt, who had so greatly admired her. (2)

Again, instead of being taken on its own merits, the work of Francis Stevens is considered in comparison to that of a man, A. Merritt. (3)

Francis Stevens worked alone. She had no known contacts with any other writers of fantasy. Unlike H.P. Lovecraft, of whom she was a rough contemporary, she did not have a circle of friends, associates, and correspondents. Nor did she have a champion, as August Derleth was for Lovecraft, unless it was A. Merritt. She was a female writer, but she is also considered one of the originators of that ill-defined sub-sub-genre, dark fantasy. That would seem to me a significant accomplishment. Yet the emphasis seems to be placed more on her femaleness than on her innovation. The question is this: can the work of Francis Stevens stand alone, or is it propped up only in comparison to or in relationship with that of her male counterparts? More often than not, Stevens has been compared to men, the significance of her work has been defined in relationship with men, and those who have written about her life in greatest detail--Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, Sam Moskowitz, Gary Hoppenstand--have been men. If Francis Stevens was one of the originators of so-called dark fantasy, then someone should make that case. If she was a significant influence upon other authors, someone should make that case as well. Instead, what we have is a strained argument that seems to say that because she was a woman, Francis Stevens needs our help, that her work can't stand on its own but needs a crutch. Gertrude Barrows Bennett's pen name was that of a man and an artifact of her time. But just how far have we come in the nine decades since her career as a published author came to an end?

Stories & Serials by Gertrude Barrows Bennett aka Francis Stevens

With reprints from the pulp-fiction era:

• "The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar" (as by G.M. Barrows, The Argosy, March 1904)

• "The Nightmare" (All-Story Weekly, April 14, 1917)

• "The Labyrinth" (three-part serial, All-Story Weekly, July 27, 1918-August 10, 1918)

• "Friend Island" (All-Story Weekly, September 7, 1918; reprinted in Fantastic Novels Magazine, September 1950)

•  "The Citadel of Fear" (seven-part serial, The Argosy, September 14, 1918-October 26, 1918; reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries Combined with Fantastic Novels Magazine, February 1942)

• "Behind the Curtain" (All-Story Weekly, September 21, 1918; reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Jan. 1940)

• "Unseen-Unfeared" (People's Favorite Magazine, February 10, 1919)

• "The Elf-Trap" (The Argosy, July 5, 1919; reprinted in Fantastic Novels Magazine, November 1949)

• "The Heads of Cerberus" (five-part serial, The Thrill Book, August 15, 1919-October 15, 1919)

• "Avalon" (four-part serial, The Argosy, August 16, 1919-September 6, 1919)

• "Claimed" (three-part serial, The Argosy, March 6, 1920-March 20, 1920; reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, April 1941; Super Science Stories, October 1944)

• "Serapion" (four-part serial, The Argosy, June 19, 1920-July 10, 1920; reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries Combined with Fantastic Novels Magazine, July 1942)

• "Sunfire" (two-part serial, Weird Tales, July 1923-September 1923)

Notes
(1) From "Francis Stevens: The Woman Who Invented Dark Fantasy" by Gary Hoppenstand, his introduction to The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy by Francis Stevens (University of Nebraska Press, 2004).
(2) From "The Woman Who Wrote 'Citadel of Fear'" by Sam Moskowitz, his introduction to The Citadel of Fear by Francis Stevens (Paperback Library, 1970), p. 9.
(3) Whenever I read his name, I can't help but think of A. Mutt, of Mutt and Jeff fame.

Note: I had intended to write and post this article on Sunday, March 8, 2015, in observance of International Women's Day. We have had a family emergency, and so I'm late in posting it. Please bear with me. I will add images later.

Corrected on October 14, 2023.

Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Clare Winger Harris (1891-1968)

Née Clare M. Winger
Aka Mrs. F.C. Harris
Author
Born January 18, 1891, Freeport, Illinois
Died October 1968, Pasadena, California

Clare Winger Harris is credited as being the first woman to write science fiction for an American magazine under her own name. Her output was modest, but her place in the history of her field is secure. She was born on January 18, 1891, in Freeport, Illinois, and attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. In 1912, Clare Winger married a native Kansan, Frank Clyde Harris (1885-19?). His work as an architect, engineer, and college instructor carried the couple from place to place in the American Midwest. Together they had three sons.

Clare Winger's father was Frank Stover Winger (1865-1936), son of the founder of the Stover Manufacturing Company of Freeport, Illinois, (1) and more importantly, author of The Wizard of the Island, or The Vindication of Prof. Waldinger (1917). Frank Stover Winger's novel, a Jules Vernian story of super-science set in the South Seas, was published less than a decade before his daughter's first tale of fantasy. There are those who speculate that her interest in science fiction stems from her father's, but I don't see any reason why that interest could not have been shared, or even that she inspired him. (2) Clare's husband, described as "a visionary architect and engineer," (3) is also seen as an inspiration to her.

Clare Winger Harris's first published story, "A Runaway World," appeared in Weird Tales in July 1926. Her first story for an out-and-out science fiction magazine was "The Fate of the Poseidonia," published in Amazing Stories less than a year later, in June 1927. According to the website of Amazing Tales,

"The Fate of the Poseidonia" is . . . . simultaneously, the first publication of a story by its author in an sf magazine, the first story by a woman published in such a magazine, and a co-winner in the first contest ever held by a science fiction magazine.

"The Fate of the Poseidonia" actually won third place in that contest and was supposed to have earned its author some prize money. Whether editor Hugo Gernsback--a notorious chiseler--ever came across with the dough is another matter. More important than the prize, perhaps, is that the door was opened for Clare Winger Harris, and by extension other women science fiction writers. Over the next two years, she wrote half a dozen stories published in Amazing Tales. Her collaborator on one of those was Miles J. Breuer, M.D. (1889-1945).

In all, Clare Winger Harris wrote eleven stories published in Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, and Science Wonder Quarterly from 1926 to 1930. Her career was brief to say the least. She gave it up to rear her children. In 1947, Clare's eleven stories were collected in hardback in Away from the Here and Now: Stories in Pseudo-Science. A novel, Persephone of Eleusis: A Romance of Ancient Greece (1923), had preceded the publication of that book. Clare also wrote four published letters in the science fiction and fantasy pulps. The last, in Wonder Stories (Aug. 1931), was an attempt at classification of science fiction themes. That letter, one of the first documents of its kind, was also, apparently, the last of her original published works of or about science fiction. Clare's stories have been anthologized many times in the years since her death. She is a favorite among those interested in feminism and science fiction.

Clare Winger Harris died in October 1968 in Pasadena, California, at age seventy-seven.

Stories of Clare Winger Harris

(Stories in Weird Tales are in bold.)

"A Runaway World" (Weird Tales, July 1926)

"The Fate of the Poseidonia" (Amazing Stories, June 1927)

"A Certain Soldier" (Weird Tales, November 1927)

"The Miracle of the Lily" (Amazing Stories, April 1928)

"The Menace From Mars" (Amazing Stories, October 1928)

"The Fifth Dimension" (Amazing Stories, December 1928)

"The Diabolical Drug" (Amazing Stories, May 1929)

"The Artificial Man" (Science Wonder Quarterly, Fall 1929)

"A Baby on Neptune" (with Miles J. Breuer, M.D., Amazing Stories, December 1929)

"The Evolutionary Monstrosity" (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Winter 1929)

"The Ape Cycle" (Science Wonder Quarterly, Spring 1930)

Letters of Clare Winger Harris

(Her letter in Weird Tales is in bold.)

Letter (Amazing Stories, May 1929)

Letter (Air Wonder Stories, September 1929)

Letter to "The Eyrie" (Weird Tales, Mar. 1930)

Letter (Wonder Stories, August 1931)

Further Reading

There is a fair amount of information on Clare Winger Harris on the Internet, but not all of it is very good or very reliable. The Wikipedia entry is inadequate. The article on the website of Amazing Stories is much better. You can also read some of her works on line.

Notes

(1) Smokey Stover of the newspaper comics page may have been named after the Stover business. See my article, "Foo! Bill Holman and Smokey Stover" in Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, Summer 2012.

(2) From the website of Amazing Stories:

It is almost certain that Harris herself was inspired to begin writing science fiction because her father, Frank Stover Winger, had written the lively, and clearly Jules Verne influenced early science fiction novel, Wizard of the Island (1917).

(3) Also from the website of Amazing Stories. 

On the cover of Amazing Stories, December 1926, the editor, Hugo Gernsback, announced a contest: "$500.00 for the Most Amazing Story Written Around This Picture." Somewhere out on this vast continent, Clare Winger Harris was watching.

Six months later, her entry in the contest, "The Fate of the Poseidonia," appeared in Amazing Tales, and for it, she won third place. However, her byline did not make the cover.

That would have to wait until October 1928, when "Menace from Mars" was published. So was this the first time that the name of a woman author appeared on the cover of a science fiction magazine? Whether it was or not, Weird Tales had been showing the bylines of its female contributors on the cover for years.

A gallery of covers with Clare Winger Harris' byline. From top to bottom: December 1928, May 1929, December 1929, and Winter 1929. The artist on all of the covers shown here was Frank R. Paul except for the December 1929 issue, which was done by H.W. Wesso.

In 1917, Clare Winger Harris' father, F.S. Winger, published his own story of super-science, The Wizard of the Island. I had hoped this book had been illustrated, but I haven't found any evidence of that. If it ever had a dust jacket, it's probably gone with the wind.

In 1926, with her first story in Weird Tales, Winger's daughter, Clare Winger Harris, followed her father into the realm of fantasy and science fiction. Thirty years after his book was published, hers was as well. Here and Now: Stories in Pseudo-Science, from 1947, collected Clare's eleven published stories in hardback. Note the flying saucer-like spaceship. This was 1947 after all. The artist was the otherwise uncredited J.M.

This is the second of three articles on women writers in observance of International Women's Day, Sunday, March 8, 2015. Thanks to La Contessa.
Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Amelia Reynolds Long (1904-1978)

Aka A.R. Long, Peter Reynolds, Patrick Laing, Adrian Reynolds, Kathleen Buddington Coxe (with Edna McHugh), Mordred Weir
Author, Poet, Editor, Museum Curator
Born November 25, 1904, Columbia, Pennsylvania
Died March 26, 1978, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Amelia Reynolds Long had a long and very fine career as an author of science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and detective stories. She was one of few female science fiction authors before the Golden Age and very likely one of few in that category to be published in both Weird Tales and Astounding Science-Fiction. Her stories for "The Unique Magazine" were six in number. One was made into a movie. Many of her stories have been reprinted again and again.

Amelia Reynolds Long was born on November 25, 1904, in Columbia, Pennsylvania, and moved at age six with her family to Harrisburg. She graduated from Harrisburg Central High School in 1922. By the time she had graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1931, Amelia was already a published author with stories in Weird Tales and Amazing Detective Tales to her credit. (She received her bachelor's degree in 1931 and a master's degree the following year.) Stories for Amazing Stories, Astounding Stories, Strange Stories, and other publications rolled out of her typewriter during the 1930s, but by the end of the decade, Amelia was ready for a change. Late in life, she explained:

I stopped writing science fiction and the weird story right around that time, because science fiction had hit the comic strips and I felt it was sort of degrading to compete with a comic strip. (1, 2)

Her first mystery novel, Behind the Evidence, was published in 1936. In all, Amelia Reynolds Long wrote nearly three dozen novels in that genre, twenty-five of which were translated into other languages. Her short stories numbered about one hundred. "The Thought Monster," from Weird Tales (1930), was made into a movie called Fiend Without a Face in 1958.

Amelia also wrote poetry and had two collections, Shreds and Patches (1974) and Counterpoint (1975), published in her lifetime. Her first poem, "Lucifer's Reply," had appeared in Kaleidograph in the early 1930s. From 1951 to 1958, Amelia was an editor of textbooks at The Stackpole Company in her hometown. Outdoor Reference Guide, from 1959, carries her byline on the cover. She was also a member of the Harrisburg Poetry Workshop of the Pennsylvania Poetry Society, and a curator at the William Penn Museum.

Amelia Reynolds Long died on March 26, 1978, in Harrisburg. She was seventy-three years old.

Stories, Article, & Letters of Amelia Reynolds Long

(Stories and one letter in the weird fiction magazines are in bold.)

"The Twin Soul" (Weird Tales, Mar. 1928)

"The Mechanical Man" (Stellar Science Fiction Series #7, 1930)

"The Thought-Monster" (Weird Tales, Mar. 1930) 

"The Magic-Maker" (Weird Tales, June 1930)

"The Mystery of the Phantom Shot" (Amazing Detective Tales, July 1930)

"The Undead" (Weird Tales, Aug. 1931)

Letter to "The Eyrie" (Weird Tales, Nov. 1931)

"Omega" (Amazing Stories, July 1932)

"Scandal in the 4th Dimension" (Astounding Stories, Feb. 1934)

"Masters of Matter" (Marvel Tales of Science and Fantasy, Mar.-Apr. 1935)

"Flapping Wings of Death" (Weird Tales, June 1935)

"A Leak in the Fountain of Youth" (Astounding Stories, Aug. 1936)

"The Album" (Weird Tales, Dec. 1936)

"Cosmic Fever" (Astounding Stories, Feb. 1937)

"Reverse Phylogeny" (Astounding Stories, June 1937)

"The Mind Master" (Astounding Stories, Dec. 1937)

"The Dimension Drug" (serial, Spaceways #1-2, 1939)

"Death by Fire" (Science Fiction, Mar. 1939)

"Time-Traveling" (letter, Startling Stories, Mar. 1939) 

"The Box from the Stars" (Strange Stories, Apr. 1939)

"Bride of the Antarctic" (as Mordred Weir, Strange Stories, June 1939)

"When the Half Gods Go--" (Astounding Science-Fiction, July 1939)

"Justice in Time" (Stardust, May 1940)

"Castaways in Space" (Science Fiction, June 1940)

"Machines That Think" (article, Spaceways, Dec, 1940)

"The Man Who Vanished" (The Phantom Detective, Summer 1950)

"The Man They Couldn’t Kill" (The Phantom Detective, Fall 1950)

"Spirit Voice" (5 Detective Novels Magazine, Fall 1950)

"Hot Money!" (G-Men Detective, Winter 1951)

"Handmade Alibi" (The Phantom Detective, Spring 1951)

"Reverse Alibi" (Smashing Detective Stories, June 1951)

"Dames Ain’t Neat" (Famous Detective Stories, Aug 1951)

"The Mountain Comes to Mohammed" (Smashing Detective Stories, Sept. 1951)

"Fatal Footsteps" (Famous Detective Stories, Nov. 1951)

"Death Looks Down" (Triple Detective, Winter 1951)

"Case of the Frightened Child" (as Patrick Laing, Famous Detective Stories, Feb. 1952)

"Breathe Deep of Death" (as Patrick Laing, Smashing Detective Stories, Sept. 1952)

Further Reading

There are several sources of information on Amelia Reynolds Long on the Internet. The most comprehensive is called "A Tribute to Amelia Reynolds Long" at this URL:

http://amelialong.tripod.com/index.htm

The author, Richard Simms, has included a long list of links and has posted numerous images, including images of Amelia's rarest books.

You can also read about her in Etchings & Odysseys #10, from 1987.

Notes

(1) Quoted in "Etchings & Odysseys Profile: A Visit with Amelia Reynolds Long" by Chet Williamson in Etchings & Odysseys #10 (1987), p. 61.

(2) I'm not sure what comic strips Amelia Reynolds Long was talking about. The big three--Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. (1929), Brick Bradford (1933), and Flash Gordon (1934)--were between six and ten years old when the 1930s ended. Perhaps she was talking about science fiction comic books rather than comic strips. In any case, her remarks are sound proof that even science fiction authors--who were themselves very often on the receiving end of cultural snobbery--could also be horrible snobs. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Science fiction is a genre. Comics are a form. You cannot compare one to the other. More to the point: There is an old quote from Duke Ellington: "If it sounds good, it is good." That judgement can be applied to all things. If a science fiction story is good, it's good. It doesn't matter what form it takes. I have read science fiction comic book stories that are much better than certain science fiction prose stories. Just because a science fiction story takes the form of a comic strip or comic book doesn't mean that it's some low form of expression. We should all remember that of all the vaunted writers of Golden Age science fiction, none foresaw that ordinary people would watch the first moon landing on their television sets. V.T. Hamlin, author of the comic strip Alley Oop, did however, and drew such a sequence in 1947. At that time and for many years after, science fiction writers were busy with the Shaver Mystery, flying saucers, Dianetics, and other nonsense.

A poster for Fiend Without a Face (1958), based on a story by Amelia Reynolds Long.

This is first in a series of three articles in observance of International Women's Day, which takes place this weekend, on Sunday, March 8, 2015.
Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Austin Hall (1880-1933)

Farmer, Ranch Hand, Watchman, Author

Born July 27, 1880, Santa Clara, California

Died July 29, 1933, San Jose, California

Austin Javen Hall was born on July 27, 1880, in Santa Clara, California. He was the son of J.S. Hall, a blacksmith, and Isabelle or Belle Hall. I don't know what happened to Austin Hall's father, but by 1900, Hall's mother had remarried. She and her son were living in Brecksville, a small town located south of Cleveland, Ohio, with Belle's husband and Austin's stepfather, Wallace McCreery. Austin was nineteen and attending school at the time. According to a 1933 interview with Forrest J Ackerman, Hall attended Ohio Northern University, Ohio State University, and the University of California. Whether he graduated or not (or attended or not), Hall was in the right place at the right age to have done what he claimed. By 1910, the McCreerys and the Halls were back in California, Wallace McCreery in Oakland, Austin Hall in Soquel Township, Santa Cruz County. Hall was married by then and employed as a farmer. His young wife was named May or Mae and she had just borne a son named Javen. That was one turning point. Another would come in the next decade of Austin Hall's life.

Austin Hall's first story, called "Almost Immortal," was published in the October 7, 1916, issue of All-Story Weekly.  The author was working on a ranch at the time. He recounted how the story came about:

One of the cowboys picked up a story half-written [and] made me finish it. Those same waddies carried it into town, had it typewritten, and sent it to the editor of the old All-Story Magazine. The editor called it the damnedest lie ever concocted, and bought it. (1)

Austin Hall's output as an author of science fiction and fantasy was small, but like most of what he wrote, "Almost Immortal" has been reprinted again and again.

I don't know where Hall was when he wrote his first story, but when he filled out his draft card a couple of years later, he was working as a farmer and a watchman in Mendota, in central California. During those last years of the 1910s, Hall built up a short list of pulp fiction credits:

• "The Rebel Soul" in All-Story Weekly (June 30, 1917)
• "Into the Infinite" in All-Story Weekly (serial, Apr. 12-May 17, 1919)
• "The Man Who Saved the Earth" in All-Story Weekly (Dec. 13, 1919)

In all, Hall claimed to have written over 600 stories. Most of those were Westerns published in the 1920s and '30s.

I have written about Austin Hall's movements in detail for a reason, for he was on a course to meet another writer with whom he would collaborate on their most famous story. That writer was Homer Eon Flint (born Flindt), a shoemaker in San Jose, California. Like Hall, Flint was a westerner. Born on September 9, 1888, in Albany, Oregon, he arrived in California no later than 1904. Flindt married a schoolteacher who encouraged him in his writing. In 1912, he began selling scenarios to Vitagraph and other filmmakers. Flint's first science fiction story was "The Planeteer," published in All-Story Weekly, March 9, 1918. Like Hall, Flint sold several more stories to All-Story as the decade was coming to an end.

By 1920, Austin Hall was living in San Jose and calling himself a writer for magazines. I don't know how he and Flint met. Perhaps it was initially through correspondence; perhaps it was in person. In any case, Forrest J Ackerman told about the origins of their most famous story:

One day when Hall was with Homer Eon Flint, Hall held his finger up before one of his eyes and said, "Couldn't a story be written about that blind spot in the eye?" Not much was said about it until four days later at lunch; then Hall outlined the whole classic to Flint; asked him to write it with him.

The story that grew out of Hall's idea was called "The Blind Spot," and it was a true collaboration, for the beginning and ending chapters were written by Hall, while the middle chapters were Flint's work. The story, which concerns a world parallel to Earth, was serialized in Argosy-All-Story Weekly from May 14 to June 18, 1921. "The Blind Spot" was reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries/Fantastic Novels in March-July 1940, and in book form at least nine times.

Both authors followed up their collaborative work with stories on their own. Austin Hall wrote the serial "People of the Comet" for Weird Tales (Sept.-Oct. 1923). He also wrote a sequel to "The Blind Spot" called "The Spot of Life," serialized in Argosy from August 13 to September 10, 1932. It, too, was reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries (Feb. 1941) and in book form. Hall wrote that story alone, for his partner in writing had died many years before. Homer Eon Flint is known for his part in writing "The Blind Spot." There is also intrigue in his death (in April 1924) behind the wheel or under the wheels of a car owned by a known criminal and perhaps connected in some way to a bank robbery. You can read more about Flint's mysterious death on the websites listed below.

Austin Hall made many claims in his life. He recounted his last meeting with Homer Eon Flint:

[W]e had just come back from a ride. It was a foggy night--two o'clock in the morning, weird and ghostly. Homer stepped away, into the mist--I can see him yet--his dim figure and his voice floating back to me: "Well, so long. I'll speak to you from the Blind Spot." (2)

Whether or not Flint ever spoke to Hall again, "The Spot of Life" was Austin Hall's last science fiction credit. He died the year after it was published, on July 29, 1933, in San Jose, California. He had just passed his fifty-third birthday.

Notes

(1) Quoted in Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "The Scientific Romance" in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920, edited and with a history by Sam Moskowitz (1970), p. 269.

(2) Ditto, p. 270.

Austin Hall's Story and Letter in Weird Tales

"People of the Comet" (two-part serial, Sept.-Oct. 1923)

Letter to "The Eyrie" (Nov. 1923)

Further Reading

Both Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint are in the online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, the Speculative Fiction Database, and Wikipedia. There are also websites or web articles devoted to Flint:

• "Homer Eon Flint: A Legacy" by Vella Munn on Strange Horizons, at this URL:

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2001/20010319/homer_eon_flint.shtml

• The website Homer Eon Flint, at this URL:

http://www.homereonflint.com/

A poor reproduction of People of the Comet, a hardbound edition of Austin Hall's earlier novel. This is the Griffin Publishing edition from 1948. The cover artist was Jack Gaughan (1930-1985).

Two years later, the story was adapted to the comics as "La comète rouge" in the Belgian magazine Bravo. 

Austin Hall is most well known for his collaboration with Homer Eon Flint on the serial "The Blind Spot." Here is the cover for a reprint in Fantastic Novels, July 1940. The cover artist was Virgil Finlay (1914-1971). I think this was my first encounter with Finlay's art. I saw it as a black-and-white reproduction in the Indianapolis Star when I was a teenager.

Here's another reprint, the Ace paperback edition of 1976. The cover artist was Alex Abel (1932-2013).

Revised and updated on July 29, 2022.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley