The New Weird Anthology-Part Four

From December 2017, updated for 2026.

My original program in 2017 was to go one by one through the authors in The New Weird anthology (2008). I didn't get very far in that very long list. Maybe that's one of the reasons I hit pause on this series. Very quickly, though:

M. John Harrison (British, born 1945) was an associate of Michael Moorcock at New Worlds magazine. He appears to have taken the lead on the formulation of "the New Weird."

Clive Barker (British, born 1952) is a prolific and very well-known author of all kinds of works.

Simon Ings (British, born 1965) has collaborated with M. John Harrison.

Kathe Koja (American, born 1960).

Thomas Ligotti (American, born 1953) is an atheist, socialist, and anti-natalist. Despite his evident leftism or progressivism, Mr. Ligotti seems to me a fairly traditional kind of writer and not one to want to throw off the past. I could be wrong.

K.J. Bishop (Australian, born 1972).

Jeffrey Ford (American, born 1955).

China Miéville (British, born 1972), is supposed to have been one of the lead proponents of the so-called "New Weird." He is of course a Marxist. He also holds a Ph.D. That places him on the academic/scholarly side of things instead of on the "self-taught" side.

Jeffrey Thomas (American, born 1957).

Brian Evenson (American, born 1966). He also holds a Ph.D., in his case in literature and critical theory, and so he is not "self-taught," either, as the writers of "the Old Weird" were.

Jay Lake (American, 1964-2014). It's never too late to send condolences, I hope, and so I send them to his family and friends.

Leena Krohn (Finnish, born 1947).

Steph Swainston (British, born 1974). From an interview on the website Clarkesworld: "I prefer not to draw lines between good fantasy and good mainstream literature, but see the whole thing as a continuum." Emphasis added.

Alistair Rennie (Scottish, b. ?) is also a musician.

These are the rest of the authors in the first two sections of The New Weird. As you can see, they are a mix of Baby Boomers and Generation X (with one pre-Boomer, and only if those categories apply in the rest of the world). The youngest of them is now past fifty years old.

Original text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley

The New Weird Anthology-Part Three

From December 2017, updated for 2026.

I am looking at the authors whose work appeared in the 2008 anthology The New Weird, edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer. This list is in chronological order by the date of composition or publication of their individual works. Michael Moorcock, who wrote his story in 1979, comes first. He is first in other ways, too.

"Crossing into Cambodia: A Story of the Third World War" (1979)

by Michael Moorcock

Born in London in 1939, Michael Moorcock is the oldest writer represented here. He came to fame as the editor (1964-1971, 1976-1996) of the British New Wave science fiction magazine New Worlds. Note the modifiers: New and New. There, I think, is the impulse: to ride a new wave, to discover new worlds, to make and forge something new, something the world has never seen before. This is the impulse of the young writer, artist, and thinker. It's also the impulse of the political progressive, radical, or revolutionary. In the world of arts and ideas, the impulse towards newness has yielded, since World War II, neorealism in Italian cinema, nouvelle vague in its French counterpart, bossa nova in Brazilian popular music, and British and American new wave music of the 1970s and '80s. Neo-, nouvelle, nova, new. 

In the world of arts and ideas, an impulse to newness is usually innocuous. In fact it often reinvigorates old forms. It is in politics--or when politics crosses over into the world of arts and ideas--that the burning desire to make something new becomes so dangerous. In striving for newness, in attempting to make a new society by throwing off the old one, by starting over again at year zero, the people behind so-called progressive political systems have murdered, starved, tortured, and imprisoned countless millions of their fellow human beings. What is claimed to be new--misery, poverty, murder, oppression--is actually as old as time. In any case, it's no coincidence that the authors of what is called "the New Weird" tend towards political progressivism. So is their aim to politicize weird fiction and fantasy? I believe so, judging from Mr. VanderMeer's introduction to The New Weird. Michael Moorcock, their progenitor, is an anarchist, pragmatist, Marxist, and socialist. He makes that clear in his writings. The authors of "the New Weird," politicized or even radicalized as they may be, would seem to follow in his footsteps. The sub-genre itself seems to exist in a direct line of descent from something he helped create, the original British New Wave. So what again is new about "the New Weird"?

If science fiction is discontinuous from other genres [an idea I haven't discussed just yet], then there was, at least in its early years, the possibility that something new could be brought into the world. New scientific discoveries and new technological developments allowed for newness in the arts. That newness seems to have worn out in the immediate postwar era, though. In his editorship of New Worlds, Mr. Moorcock wrote and encouraged the writing of a new kind of soft, sociological, political, and philosophical science fiction that departed from the conventional hard, scientific, technological, and action-oriented science fiction of the 1920s through the 1950s. In addition, the New Wave was about making science fiction more literary. I can't argue with any of that, and I have enjoyed science fiction from the 1960s and '70s written under the influence of the New Wave.

Following the pulp era, science fiction certainly needed higher literary standards. One result of the New Wave may be that some more literary authors--Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, Walker Percy--have also indulged themselves in writing science fiction, without fear of shame or opprobrium. But conventional science fiction authors have closed in on finer literature from the other direction, too. I don't know whether we're there yet, but there may come a time when science fiction and fantasy are continuous with a higher or finer literature. (Continuity--there's that concept again.) Maybe someday there will even be a Nobel Prize winner among authors of genre fiction. (If Bob Dylan can win the prize, why not someone who writes about talking squids from outer space?) I believe attaining a higher literary quality or a merging of genre fiction with finer literature was also a goal of "the New Weird."

According to the Wikipedia article on him, Michael Moorcock has written in reaction to or unfavorably of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert A. Heinlein, and many other authors considered to be conservative or reactionary. For a more in-depth discussion of this topic, read Mr. Moorcock's essay "Starship Stormtroopers" (1977; 1984). There's a lot of the typical leftist claptrap in "Starship Stormtroopers," but don't let that stop you: it's an interesting, engaging, informative, and well-written work. Reading it also helps to illuminate the issue at hand, for Michael Moorcock and the New Wave seem to have shared with the authors of "the New Weird" a desire to throw off the past and to dismiss or discard the writers and works of the past.

So, it seems to me that the inspiration and model for "the New Weird" of today (actually yesterday, as its eponymous anthology was published nearly two decades ago--more on that in a minute) is the New Wave of the 1960s and '70s. These supposedly new sub-genres or sub-sub-genres are of the same essence (1):

• Both are in reaction to older and supposedly more conservative authors, conventions, styles, forms, etc., each in its respective sub-genre, New Wave in science fiction and "the New Weird" in weird fiction. That reaction is often extremely fierce, angry, and dismissive. In fact, the fierceness, anger, and dismissiveness of current authors towards their predecessors seems to be an identifying feature of supposedly new literary movements.

• Both strive to make something new of old genres, but that impulse to newness may not be exclusively or even most importantly towards artistic, literary, or aesthetic innovation. The impulse to newness may actually be more powerfully driven by leftwing political philosophies of various stripes: Marxism, socialism, progressivism, anarchism, nihilism, the New Left (there's that word New again), critical theory, political correctness, multiculturalism, cultural Marxism, radical environmentalism, the cult of global warming, etc.

• Both strive also towards higher literary standards and towards a confounding of categorization, a crossing over, bending, or merging of genres, ultimately perhaps a convergence of genre fiction with mainstream literature.

So, New Wave did all of that to science fiction, but that began more than sixty years ago. It may have been new then, but it can't be new now. The impulse to newness makes us need something new new. So maybe what New Wave did to science fiction in the 1960s and '70s can be done to weird fiction today [or eighteen years ago, when the anthology was published]. Maybe an old genre or sub-genre can be remade as a politically progressive new sub-genre called "the New Weird" in which the authors, conventions, styles, and forms of the past are overthrown, dismissed, discarded, or even forgotten. In the process maybe literary standards can be raised as well. Maybe that's where Michael Moorcock came in, and maybe that's why he was represented in The New Weird, for what he did with the New Wave in Britain appears to be the model for what Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer tried to do with "the New Weird" in America and elsewhere. In other words, they may have tried to make something "new" by simply copying something that was done before, in fact nearly fifty years before. (2) If that was their plan, they should have made quicker work of it: the New Wave in science fiction lasted a couple of decades before supposedly being overtaken by cyberpunk. (3) If the publication of the VanderMeers' anthology marked the beginning of "the New Weird" as a sub-genre or sub-sub-genre (or maybe what they wanted was to make it a supergenre), then it was already approaching obsolescence when it was still hot off the press, for we live in an era--a progressive, science-fictional era--in which anything done a year or even a month ago is already old hat. And on top of all that, the VanderMeers lost their showcase for their ideas, in the form of Weird Tales, just as Mr. Moorcock had in New Worlds, in their case in 2012 when Marvin Kaye gained control of the magazine. In the world of today, what's an editor attempting a revolution to do when he loses his or her magazine?

Note

(1) Even the names are of these two sub-genres are similar. It's as if the proponents of this supposedly new thing stood on the edge of a chasm, shouted "New Wave," and heard back the echo "New Weird." One problem is that "the New Weird" is such an awkward construction. At least wave is a noun. Put new in front of it and it rolls pretty trippingly from the tongue. Beyond that, everyone knows what a new wave is and everyone wants to ride it. Ask anyone what is "the New Weird" and you're likely to get back a blank stare. No one seems to know. Actually, I think I know: "the New Weird" is [or was] hype. And not very successful hype. It was an attempt to make something new by copying something old that was once new, i.e., new more than four decades before. It appears to me to have been something that has been tried so often before: an attempt by an intellectual (or pseudo-intellectual) of whatever merit to make a name and a place for himself in the world and in the history of ideas. This striving for notice is especially prominent in democratic societies, those in which every man is responsible for his own status but in which all men are made equal and reduced to the same level. Leftists claim to love democracy, but it is in a democracy that they are most frustrated in their desire to rise above everyone else.

(2) First in print in 1926--100 years ago this month--Amazing Stories was the first science fiction magazine in America. The term science fiction hadn't even been invented yet when it first appeared on the newsstand. Thirty-eight years later--in 1964--Michael Moorcock assumed the editorship of New Worlds. In other words, the New Wave was older in 2017 (when I wrote) than was magazine science fiction as a whole when Mr. Moorcock arrived at New Worlds. Even cyberpunk is getting pretty long in the tooth. Remind me again, what exactly is new about all of this?

(3) You might date the beginnings of cyberpunk to the arrival of William Gibson's Gothic science fiction novel Neuromancer in 1984. Cyberpunk is supposed to have grown out of the New Wave. Because of that, I'm not sure anyone can say that the New Wave actually came to an end. (Beginnings and endings, firsts and lasts, are always hard to fix.) In any case, note that the first two stories in The New Weird are also from 1984. It may have been that what is called "the New Weird" was really just a continuation of the New Wave, mixed with other genres, including cyberpunk, then shaken, stirred, and given a new name. In other words, the so-called "New Weird" wasn't new at all. By the way, notice the pun: Neuromancer ≈ New Romancer. And remember the name of the protagonist from the very loose movie adaptation of William Gibson's cyberpunk novel: Neo from The Matrix (1999). Newness. Always newness.

New Worlds, August 1967, under the editorship of Michael Moorcock and with a cover design by Eduardo Paolozzi. Even Marxists know that sex sells.

Text copyright 2017, 2026 Terence E. Hanley

Shakespeare in "The Eyrie"

Sometimes there was verse in "The Eyrie." The authors of that verse aren't credited in bibliographies. I can understand why. But for the sake of completeness, and for the sake of not missing out on things that might prove interesting and edifying, maybe we need a list of the authors of verse who appeared in "The Eyrie."

William Shakespeare wasn't the first, but his name came up in the February issue of 1925, one hundred years ago this month. That was part of an ongoing discussion on horror and what some readers called "necrophilia" in the pages of the magazine. Following is an excerpt from "The Eyrie." Farnsworth Wright's was almost certainly the editorial voice. (Boldface is added.)

(The quote begins:)

We recently attended a performance of "Romeo and Juliet"; and as we heard Jane Cowl deliver Juliet's speech before she takes the poison, we realized that the same speech, if published in a WEIRD TALES story, would be denounced by some of our indignant readers (not many, but surely by some) as "gruesome", "shocking", "offensive". A few of our good friends would undoubtedly write letters asking us why we so offended against good taste as to draw such a "disgusting" picture of Juliet awaking at midnight in the vault,

"Where, for these many hundred years, the bones

Of all my buried ancestors are packed;

Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,

Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,

At some hours of the night spirits resort: --

Alack, alack! is it not like that I,

So early waking--what with loathsome smells,

And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,

That living mortals, hearing them, run mad --

Oh, if I wake, shall I not lie distraught,

Environed with all these hideous fears.

And madly play with my forefathers' joints,

And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?

And in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,

As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?"

But there will be no indignant letters, because we have quoted this from the thousand-souled Shakespeare. And what about "Hamlet", with the stage strewn with dead bodies in the last act? And the ghost of "the blood-boltered Banquo" at Macbeth's banquet? And that gruesome scene where Macbeth washes his hands of the murdered Duncan's blood:

"What hands are these ? Ha! they pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather 
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red."

We fear Shakespeare would fare quite badly at the hands of some of our readers. And the gentle Poe, who is still America's favorite author, and growing in popularity year by year (although the man himself died poor and neglected seventy-five years ago) -- how would Poe fare if he were writing today? Hardly better than he fared during his life. But the weird tales of that great master remain as a precious heritage to the whole world.

Considering the present unceasing popularity of the works of this great master of weird literature, we have no fear for the future of WEIRD TALES so long as the magazine remains weird.

(End of quote.)

And now here we are one hundred years later and Weird Tales (such as it is) is still being published.

(By the way, Jane Cowl played Juliet in performances in various places in Illinois in 1923-1924. In November 1924, she was at the Garrick Theatre in Chicago. Maybe that was when and where Farnsworth Wright saw her perform.)

Romeo and Juliet, Act V Scene III: Juliet Wakes in the Vault to Find Romeo Dead by G. Goldberg.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales, May/June/July 1924-Non-Fiction & Other Fillers

Following is a list of the fillers in the May/June/July issue of Weird Tales, a list transcribed from the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Thanks to them again. All are by uncredited authors. Most have asterisks around them. Read on to see what they mean.

• **"Juvenile Criminal," about the Hon. Grey Bennett and a boy named Leary. There really was a Grey Bennett, as remote from the first year of Weird Tales as we are from it.**

• **"Retaliation," about a British ship.**

• **"Providential Warning at Sea," about Captain Thomas Rogers and his ship Society in about 1694.**

• **"Pastime of Despots," about Czar Peter.**

• **"The Unnatural Son," about a theft in Salisbury.**

• **"Singular Discovery of a Murder in 1740," an account of events at St. Neots, England.**

• **"Giants," about very tall men known to history.**

• **"Sham Fight," about a battle between Christian and Musselman armies at Bostra [sic].**

• **"War Horses," about war in Funen, Denmark.**

• **"The Original Bluebeard," about Gilles, Marquis de Laval. Seabury Quinn had covered him before in his non-fiction series "Weird Crimes," in October 1923.**

• **"Distressing March of the Crusaders Through Phrygia."**

• **"Remarkable Accident," about Baptiste, an actor at the Comedie Francaise in 1820.**

• *"An Account of a Family Who Were All Afflicted with the Loss of Their Limbs," about John Dowling of Wattisham, England.*

• *"Hypocrisy Detected," set in Paris.*

• *"Force of Imagination," also set in Paris.*

• *"Immolation of Human Beings," about the Ashantees [sic] of Africa.*

• **"Imprisonment of Baron De Geramb."**

• *"Anecdote Concerning the Execution of King Charles the First."*

• **"Anne Boleyn."**

• **"The Heroes of Hindoostan."**

• *"Extraordinary Instance of Second Sight," about a French army officer quartered in Scotland during "the previous century."*

• **"Miracles," about a Dr. Connell and his patient, named Anne Mulligan, in 1777.**

• **"National Superstition," about two Venetians.**

• **"Death of the Duchess of Bedford."**

• **"Pardon for Forgery," a case from 1803.**

• **"Terrific Death of a Painter," about Peter Peutemann.**

• **"Deaths by Lightning," set in Ireland.**

• **"Wonderful Providence," about war in France in 1562.**

• **"Monsieur Rouelle," about the "celebrated chemist."**

• **"A Singular Experiment," about an Irish boy named Magrath who fell into the hands of a "subtile doctor," a kind of Procrustes who experimented on the boy and made of him a monstrous creation. This account goes along with my suggestion that medical doctors are very often psychopaths or sociopaths and see their fellow human beings as mere material and subjects for their bizarre and monstrous experimentation. We recently had one of those at the head of a large governmental agency. He and his fellows very likely developed and loosed upon the world a deadly virus and in response created an oppressive regime that is still lurking, still preying, including in the minds of his and their followers, supporters, and apologists. Monstrous medical doctors recently won a victory for themselves in Ohio, too. Now they have the power under the state constitution to decide who is a human being and who is not. Now we have another Moloch State.**

• **"Pentilly House, Cornwall," about a Mr. Tilly, an atheist.**

• **"Singular Combat," about England in the time of Henry IV.**

• **"Fatal Misfortune and Singular Instance of Affection in a Horse," set in England.**

• *"Punishment of the Knout in Russia."*

• **"Intrepid Conduct of Admiral Douglas," about a mutiny on board the ship Stately.**

• "Only Sound," a very brief item from the Los Angeles Times. (Below it are two jokes.)

• "Odd Facts," half a dozen brief fillers. (Below it are three anecdotes or jokes. So there are five untitled anecdotes or jokes in addition to 37 titled fillers.)

As I was about halfway through this list, I discovered the original source of most of these accounts. The source is:

The Terrific Register; or, Record of Crimes, Judgements, Providences, and Calamities, Volume I and Volume II, published in 1825 by Sherwood, Jones, and Co., of London, and Hunter of Edinburgh.

Presumably all are factual, so no fiction to add to the 37 stories in this issues. Items taken from Volume I have single asterisks around them in the list above. Those from Volume II have double asterisks. Seven of the items are from Volume I of The Terrific Register. Twenty-eight are from Volume II. That makes 35 in all, leaving only two that are from other sources.

So, if we're trying to get from 37 new stories in the interior of the anniversary number to the 50 promised on its cover, then we'll have to add 13 of the items listed above, I guess. You get to choose. A couple of them are almost as long as the shortest new stories.

It's clear that Otis Adelbert Kline was not the author of these fillers, as he had been (or probably was) in previous issues. But if he was acting as editor, or co-editor, then maybe he was the one who chose them for inclusion. And that makes me think that there must have been copies of these two volumes either in a public or university library in Chicago or in a private collection to which he had access. And now I think we had better look at the fillers in previous issues for their possible origins in the same two volumes of The Terrific Register.

I have written before about the Fortean method. I called it that after Charles Fort (1874-1932), author, gadfly of science, and collector of oddities. People who read and wrote for Weird Tales knew of Fort and his ways. Some became Forteans themselves. Others simply availed themselves of the Fortean method in creating their fictions. Like I said, I have suspected that Otis Adelbert Kline was the author of the many non-fiction fillers printed in Weird Tales in its first year, and maybe he was after all, taking after Fort in the process. But it's clear with this discovery of The Terrific Register as a source that Kline was not the sole author of the Weird Tales fillers and that Fort was not the first collector of oddities. He, along with Kline, was simply working in an older tradition. I wonder how far back that tradition goes. And I wonder: is history simply a field engaged in telling about the odd events--the crimes, judgements, providences, and calamities--of the past? Aside from that, are not these accounts simply retellings of how weird works in our lives and affairs?

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Lady Gwendolen Cecil (1860-1945)

Lady Gwendolen Georgiana Gascoyne-Cecil
Author, Biographer
Born July 28, 1860, London, England
Died September 28, 1945, Hertfordshire, Hertford, England

Gwendolen Georgiana Gascoyne-Cecil was born on July 28, 1860, in London, England. She was the daughter of Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830-1903), and the former Georgina Charlotte Alderson (1827-1899). Gwendolen's father, the Marquess of Salisbury, also known as Lord Robert Cecil and Lord Salisbury, was a member of Parliament, secretary of state for India, British foreign secretary, and three-time prime minister of the United Kingdom. His wife was his literary assistant and the mother of his eight children. She also wrote political articles for publication in the Saturday Review and the Quarterly Review.

Lady Gwendolen Cecil was an author and her father's biographer. She wrote a short story called "The Little Ray," published in The Pall Mall Magazine in August 1894. She was also the anonymous author of "The Closed Cabinet," which was in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (Vol. CLVII, No. DCCCLI) in January 1895. Her major work was her four-volume biography of her father, entitled Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury (1921, 1932). "The Closed Cabinet" was her lone story in Weird Tales, and it was reprinted anonymously.

Lady Gwendolen died on September 28, 1945, in Hertfordshire, Hertford, England. She was eighty-five years old. She has a cultivar of the peony named after her, a distinction no doubt unique among contributors to "The Unique Magazine."

Lady Gwendolen Cecil's Story in Weird Tales
"The Closed Cabinet" as by _____ _____ (May 1923)

Further Reading
Not much that I have found or of note except in old newspaper articles, including a number that describe her being in an automobile accident in 1908. She was run over by her own electric vehicle after having gotten out to open a gate.

Gwendolen Gascoyne-Cecil (1860-1945) in a portrait drawn in 1895 by Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898).

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

"The Closed Cabinet" by _____ _____ & Sunday Swipes No. 3

"The Moon Terror" by A.G. Birch was the first story in the May 1923 issue of Weird Tales. "The Closed Cabinet" by _____ _____ was the last. _____ _____ was an anonymous author in the pages of "The Unique Magazine" and in the original. The original was Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (Vol. CLVII, No. DCCCLI), published in January 1895. The publication of "The Closed Cabinet" was announced in newspapers in December 1894. In its issue of January 21, 1895, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle called it "an old time Scotch story." (p. 12)

In an item called "Literary Gossip," the Bowling Green, Ohio, Daily Sentinel-Tribune (Mar. 7, 1895, p. 2) attributed authorship of the story to Lady Gwendolen Cecil, daughter of the Marquess of Salisbury. There isn't any source given for that bit of information. This was gossip after all. Her authorship was previously confirmed in The Author, Playwright and Composer, Volumes 5 and 6, page 246, also from 1895. Maybe that's the source of the item out of Bowling Green. By the way, The Collector's Index to Weird Tales by Sheldon R. Jaffery and Fred Cook, an indispensable source in my writing of this blog, was also published in Bowling Green.

I'm not the first person to track down authorship of "The Closed Cabinet" to Lady Gwendolen. Scottish editor Johnny Mains (b. 1976) did that before me for his collection A Suggestion of Ghosts: Supernatural Fiction by Women, 1854-1900 (2018). More than a hundred years before Mr. Mains published his book, Julian Hawthorne (1846-1934) included "The Closed Cabinet" in his series Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories (1907-1909?). It looks like this series was also called and/or reprinted as The Lock and Key Library. Lady Gwendolen's story is in the volume Old-Time English Stories (1909), the contents of which are as follows:

• "The Haunted House" by Charles Dickens (1859)
• "No. 1 Branch Line: The Signal-Man" by Charles Dickens (1866)
• "The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain" by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1859)
• "The Incantation" by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (date unknown)
• "The Avenger" by Thomas De Quincey (1838)
• "Melmoth the Wanderer" by Charles Maturin (1821)
• "A Mystery with a Moral" by Laurence Sterne (date unknown)
• "On Being Found Out" by William Makepeace Thackeray (1861)
• "The Notch on the Ax" by William Makepeace Thackeray (1862)
• "Bourgonef" by unknown
• "The Closed Cabinet" by unknown (Lady Gwendolen Cecil)

Only some of these are considered fantasy, ghost stories, or weird fiction. Not all are included in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

"The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain" by Edward Bulwer-Lytton was the first reprint in Weird Tales, "The Closed Cabinet" now the second. It looks as though both came from the same source, namely, Julian Hawthorne's collection from earlier in the century. Charles Dickens' story "The Signal-Man" was also reprinted in Weird Tales, in the issue of April 1930. A second by-the-way: Julian Hawthorne was the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) and the father of Hildegarde Hawthorne (1871-1952), both of whom also had stories in Weird Tales, though both posthumously.

Next: Lady Gwendolen Cecil (1860-1945)

"Her Countenance Grew Fierce," an illustration by an unknown artist for "The Incantation" by Edward Bulwer-Lytton and the frontispiece for The Lock and Key Library: The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations, Old Time English, edited by Julian Hawthorne (New York: The Review of Reviews Co., 1915). I have altered this image from a photograph taken of the original.

The image shown above may seem familiar to you. Have a look at the cover illustration for the May 1923 issue of Weird Tales, made by William F. Heitman:

Now here they are side by side, with the Weird Tales cover flipped:

No wonder Heitman's cover was so uncharacteristic of his regular work, and no wonder that the male figure on the right doesn't match very well the female on the left in its treatment or technique.

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

J.B.M. Clarke, Jr. (1883-1959)-The First British Author and a Second Canadian

James Blyth Macalester Clark, Jr.
Journalist, Author
Born August 26, 1883, Liverpool, England
Died February 5, 1959, Rainhill Hospital, Liverpool, England

James Blyth Macalester Clark, Jr., was born on August 26, 1883, in Liverpool, England. His parents were James Blyth Macalester Clark (1847-1935), a Scottish-born optician and a man in business, and Esther Allan Nichol (1848-1885). Clark, Senior, was married twice, first to Esther Allan Nichol, on May 12, 1879, in Dumfermline, Fife, Scotland; next to Eliza Jane Dobbie (1850-1900), on June 2, 1889, in Toxteth, St. Philemon, Lancashire, England. In 1881, the Clark family was in Toxteth Park in Lancashire. In 1891, they were in Cathcart, Renfrewshire, Scotland.

A James Blyth Macalester Clark was admitted to Gartnavel Royal Asylum, an insane asylum, in 1909. Whether that was the father or the son, I can't say. But in 1911, Clark, Junior, crossed over to Quebec, Canada. His father followed in 1915 and lived in Montreal until the summer of 1935, when he returned to England. James B.M. Clark, Sr., died on July 26, 1935, in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. His children were Esther Marie (Clark) Mitchell, Elizabeth Grieg (Clark) Sawer, J.B.M. Clark, Jr., and Alexander D. Clark.

J.B.M. Clark, Jr., of Montreal visited in Burlington, Vermont, in 1918. His story "The Ape Man" is set in Burlington and in neighboring Winooski. (By looking for Clark in Vermont, I discovered his full name and the facts needed for this biographical sketch.) In 1921, Clark moved to Los Angeles, California. I don't know how long he stayed there. In 1935 when his father died, he was back in Montreal. Like his father before him, he returned to England. Clark died on February 5, 1959, at Rainhill Hospital, Liverpool, England. He was seventy-five years old. His wife may have been A.D. Clark (?-1964).

James B.M. Clark, Jr., wrote nonfiction and fiction. "The Ape-Man," from Weird Tales, March 1923, was his first story listed in The FictionMags Index. That list includes stories from 1923 to 1932. Clark also had brief stories syndicated in American newspapers during the 1920s and '30s. Clark's stories were in Cabaret Stories, Clues, Detective Fiction Weekly, Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories, and a number of boys' magazines. His nonfiction seems to have been exclusively in British magazines.

J.B.M. Clarke, Jr.'s Stories in Weird Tales
"The Ape-Man" (Mar. 1923)
"Windows of Destiny" (Apr. 1927)

Further Reading
None known except for his stories.

J.B.M. Clarke, Jr.'s Story:

"The Ape-Man" is a long short story in six chapters. It takes place in Burlington and Winooski, Vermont, an unusual setting for a story in the first issue of Weird Tales. The author Clark is known to have visited in Burlington. I didn't realize until looking at a map just how close Burlington is to Clark's hometown of Montreal.

There are three main characters in "The Ape-Man," human characters, that is. There are also two simian characters. One of the men, Needham, seems to be halfway between one and the other. Another of the men, Norton, calls him "a throwback--an atavistic specimen." Needham lives a slovenly existence in a closed-up house in Burlington. His companion is a little monkey named Fifi, who wears clothing like a person. Needham has been to Africa and has observed baboons in the wild. From his observations, he has learned something about how baboons communicate. He seems to have formed a bond with one of them, a dominant male.

One night, Norton has a frightening experience while walking through Ethan Allen Park, which is close to Needham's house on North Avenue. He sees Needham gamboling in the park, more like an ape than a man. Needham follows him. He's in a tree and reaches down to grasp Norton by the throat, chuckling, "Aha! You would give me away, would you!" Fortunately Norton escapes.

There is a circus in town. Norton and his friend Meldrum go there. Naturally there are baboons among the circus animals. Needham shows up and gives his curious cry. The smaller baboons are cowed by it. The dominant one is not. Could this be the same animal with whom Needham communicated in Africa?

Norton agrees to go to Needham's house the next day. Call it an idiot-plot device. Meldrum goes later. Instinct tells him to take his pistol. From outside the door, he witnesses a strange tableau: Needham and the baboon are sitting at a table and drinking whiskey. Norton is already unconscious. It looks as though Needham commands the baboon to kill Norton. Meldrum intervenes. Shots are fired. The lights go out. (That little Fifi!) Help comes along, and Norton is saved.

"The Ape-Man" is unusual in its setting. It's also unusual in its diction. It's no surprise to learn that the author was born in England and lived in Canada. Clark's story is well developed. However, the ending isn't very satisfying. It may be that Clark didn't quite know how to bring his story to a close after having set it up pretty well. In any case, we have the last story and the last author in the first issue of Weird Tales.

Ethan Allen Park Tower, a feature mentioned in "The Ape-Man" by J.B.M Clark, Jr.

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

H.T.W. Bousfield (1891-1967)

Henry Thomas Wishart Bousfield
Professor of History, Army Officer, Author, Banker, Businessman
Born May 29, 1891, Sudbury, Derbyshire, England
Died Early 1965, Kensington, London, England

Henry Thomas Wishart Bousfield was born on May 29, 1891, in Sudbury, Derbyshire, England. He was the son of Reverend Stephen Bousfield, a rector at Shelton, Nottinghamshire, and Edith Margaret (Wishart) Bousfield, J.P., a social worker in Grantham, Lincolnshire, after her husband's death. She was the daughter of Captain G. Wishart, R.N., of London.

H.T.W. Bousfield attended Cambridge University. In 1913, at the age of twenty-two and describing himself as a professor of history, he traveled to India. Bousfield served in the British Indian Army, attaining the rank of captain. Attached to the 69th Punjabis, Captain Bousfield served on the Western Front during the Great War, including at the Battle of Loos (Sept. 25-Oct. 8, 1915), where he had a strange experience. You can read about it on line in an item entitled "A Mysterious Visitor" in The Occult Review, Vol. XXX (July-Dec. 1919), pages 64-65.

In 1922, Bousfield was affianced to Lady June Butler, a poetess. She ended up marrying another man, in 1923. Bousfield married instead Mary Adeline Guest, on November 26, 1929, at the Church of St. Margaret's, Westminster Abbey. She wore a bridal veil worn by her great-great-grandmother, Charlotte Lennox, Duchess of Richmond, who put on the renowned Duchess of Richmond's Ball the night before the Battle of Waterloo commenced. Bousfield was friends with the Hungarian artist Philip de László (1869-1937), who presented him with a portrait of his new bride as a wedding gift.

Once returned to his native land, Bousfield worked as a banker, also as chairman and managing director of Central Advertising Service, Ltd. From 1910 until at least 1944, he wrote stories and poems published in Britannia and Eve, Country Life, The Grand Magazine, Lloyd's Magazine, Nash's-Pall Mall Magazine, Pearson's Magazine, The Royal Magazine, The Sketch, The Windsor Magazine, and other British magazines. One of these stories was in "The Man Who . . ." category, "The Man Who Took Too Much Trouble" (The Windsor Magazine, Mar. 1935). "The God with Four Arms" (The Windsor Magazine, Apr. 1933) was described in contemporary newspaper items as "macabre." It became the lead story in a collection, The God with Four Arms and Other Stories, published in 1939 by Arthur Barker Ltd. A second collection, Vinegar--and Cream, was published in 1941 by John Murray. The phrase "Very Important Person" (or "Personage") made an early appearance in his story "The Only Girl Who Wasn't a Bore" (The Windsor Magazine, Feb. 1934). Bousfield had just one story in Weird Tales, "The Impossible Adventure," in the issue of November 1940. He also wrote the text for pamphlets or brochures, including RMS Queen Mary: The Ship of Beautiful Woods (Cunard-White Star, no date).

I don't have anything on H.T.W. Bousfield after 1944 except for the year and place of his death, 1965 (in the period January through March) in Kensington, London, England. He was seventy-three years old.

H.T.W. Bousfield's Story in Weird Tales
"The Impossible Adventure" (Nov. 1940)

Further Reading
Various minor sources in newspaper and on line.

H.T.W. Bousfield with his future bride, Mary Adeline Guest, from the Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales), November 26, 1929, page 10.

A real weird tale told by Bousfield and recounted in the Liverpool Daily Post, March 30, 1936, page 9.

Original text copyright 2022, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

William F. Temple (1914-1989)

Author, Science Fiction Fan, Fanzine Editor, Clerk, Soldier
Born March 9, 1914, Woolwich, Royal Borough of Greenwich, England
Died July 15, 1989, Folkestone, Kent, England

William F.J. Temple was of or close to the same generation as British science fiction authors and fans Stafford Aylmer (1907-1965), A. Bertram Chandler (1912-1984), H.S.W. Chibbett (1900-1978), Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), Rex Dolphin (1915-1990), Leslie J. Johnson (1914-?), Eric A. Leyland (1911-2001), Eric Frank Russell (1905-1978), E.C. Tubb (1919-2010), and John Wyndham (1903-1969). All but Arthur C. Clarke were also in Weird Tales, and almost all had their stories published in that magazine after World War II. I sense a pattern.

William Frederick Joseph Temple, called "Bill," was born on March 9, 1914, in Woolwich, England. He became a clerk on the London Stock Exchange at age sixteen. During the 1930s, he was involved with science fiction fandom in his native country as a member of the Science Fiction Association (SFA) and the British Interplanetary Society. He served as chair of the Writer's Circle for SFA and on the editorial staff of its publication Novae Terrae. He was also editor of the Bulletin of the British Interplanetary Society. Living in London, Temple shared an apartment (or flat) with fellow fans Arthur C. Clarke and Maurice K. Hanson (1918-1981). He wrote about his experience in Bachelor Flat, which was finally published in 2000 as 88 Gray's Inn Road: A Living-Space Odyssey, and Other Stories.

Temple's first professional story was "The Kosso," published in the book Thrills: A Collection of Uneasy Tales (1935). He had dozens more stories and letters in science fiction magazines and fanzines from 1937 to 1978, though his output dropped off considerably after about 1959. Temple is probably most well known for his novel Four-Sided Triangle (1949), originally the short story "The 4-Sided Triangle" in Amazing Stories, November 1949, and adapted to a British film in 1953. Temple's lone story for Weird Tales was the somewhat similarly titled "The Triangle of Terror" from May 1950 and reprinted in the Winter issue, 1985. By the way, Four-Sided Triangle had a twisted road to publication. Temple worked on the novel version of his story while serving in the British army during World War II. His manuscript was lost or destroyed not once but twice in battle, the first time at Takrouna, Tunisia, the second at the Battle of Anzio. Temple finished his novel in the Alps after the war and submitted it to four different publishers before it was finally accepted.

Temple married Joan Gertrude Nellie Streeton (1917-?) in September 1939. They had three children, Peter Temple, who died as a child, Anne Katherine Temple Patrizio (1940-2019), and Cliff Temple (1947-1994), who died by suicide after being unjustifiably smeared. William F.J. Temple died on July 15, 1989, in Folkestone, England, at age seventy-five.

William F. Temple's Story in Weird Tales
"The Triangle of Terror" (May 1950; reprinted Winter 1985)

Further Reading
There are entries on William F. Temple in:

• The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
• The FictionMags Index
• The Internet Movie Database
• The Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Wikipedia

"The 4-Sided Triangle" was originally in Amazing Stories in November 1939. The theme of the illustration is the ever-popular Woman-in-a-Test-Tube. The artist was H.W. McCauley.

Temple's story/novel has been reprinted again and again, as in this Italian edition with cover art by C. Caesar. Richard Shaver might have had something to say about the tero in the title.

I like to show foreign-language editions of works originally in English. Here is a Spanish edition of The Three Suns of Amara by William F. Temple, originally from 1962. I don't know the name of the artist.

Text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Brandon Fleming (1889-1970)

Charles Brandon Raincock Fleming

Journalist, Author, Playwright, Screenwriter, Producer
Born April 27, 1889, Streatham, Surrey, England
Died October 1970, Kensington, Greater London, England

Charles Brandon Raincock Fleming, known as Brandon Fleming, was born on April 27, 1889, in Streatham, Surrey, England. In the census of 1911 he was head of his household, which included his widowed mother, and employed as a freelance journalist. He had already begun by then signing his name as Brandon Fleming.

Fleming wrote dozens of short stories published from 1910 to 1941 in The Blue Magazine, The Corner Magazine, Detective Fiction Weekly, The Novel Magazine, Pearson's Magazine, The Red Magazine, The Story-Teller, The Strand Magazine, and other titles. He had just one story in Weird Tales, "The Ruby," from January 1933. That story had previously been printed in The Grand Magazine #332, dated October 1932. "The Ruby" is the only story by Brandon Fleming listed in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. He may have written others, but it would take a reading of many British pulp magazines and story magazines to find out. This might be a job for someone located closer to the source.

Brandon Fleming was also a playwright, screenwriter, and film producer. He wrote the source material and/or screenplays for thirteen movies, from The Eleventh Commandment (1924) to Music and Millions (1936). The Internet Movie Database has more than one Brandon Fleming in its lists of credits. A second of these Brandons wrote and produced movies that were released between 1954 and 1963, including a horror movie called The Woman Eater (1958), which might be added to the Botanical Fiction Database. I'm pretty sure these were the same Brandon because Brandon Fleming the magazine writer had a story called "The Flaw" in Detective Fiction Weekly (Mar. 19, 1932), and Brandon Fleming the screenwriter wrote the scenario for a crime film called The Flaw, released in 1955.

The fact that Brandon Fleming's credits ended in 1941 and didn't pick up again until 1954 makes me think he was engaged in the war effort, possibly afterwards in government service or journalism. In any case, Brandon Fleming lived a long life and died fifty-one years ago this month, in October 1970, in Kensington, Greater London, England. He was eighty-one years old.

Brandon Fleming's Story in Weird Tales
"The Ruby" (Jan. 1933; originally in The Grand Magazine #332, Oct. 1932)

Further Reading
None that I can find, although a search for back issues posted to the Internet might yield some of his stories. Also, Fleming's stories are listed on The FictionMags Index, an invaluable source for fans of pulp fiction.

The Story-Teller, a British magazine, with Brandon Fleming's name on the cover, September 1927.

A poster or lobby card for The Woman Eater, released in 1958 with a screenplay by Brandon Fleming. The coconut-half claws of the tree-monster remind me of the claws of the creatures created by H.P. Lovecraft for "The Shadow Out of Time," the cover story of Astounding Stories, June 1936. You can see similar images in my blog entry called "Trees and Other Plants on the Cover of Weird Tales," dated February 11, 2014, by clicking here.

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Lady Eleanor Smith & The Ballerina's Last Dance

I have written before about Lady Eleanor Smith (1902-1945), a British aristocrat of the first half of the twentieth century. She was also of course an author who had one story, "Satan's Circus," in Weird Tales (Oct. 1931). Lady Eleanor wrote more than a dozen books, mostly about dancers, circuses, and Gypsies. As with so many highborn or elite kind of people, she seems to have been attracted to the low life. I'm sure that in the opinion of some, there isn't much in culture lower than pulp magazines. If there is, comic books are probably it. So imagine coming across Lady Eleanor Smith's name in that lowly form:

The story shown above is from Ripley's Believe It or Not! True Ghost Stories #11, published by Gold Key (Western Publishing Company) in November 1968. I found my copy of this comic book at a mini-comic con in Nitro, West Virginia, in May of this year. It was the first comic con I have gone to this year. After more than a year of the not-normal, things are getting back to the way they used to be, or as much as is possible in our current situation. Here's to more comic conventions, get-togethers, parties, celebrations, and on and on, and no return at all to the coronavirus regime established the world over in 2020-2021.

Update (Feb. 1, 2022): I have found another account of the scene described by the anonymous author in Ripley's Believe It or Not! True Ghost Stories. This one is from the book Impossible Yet It Happened! by R. DeWitt Miller (Ace Books, n.d., pp. 48-49). And Miller gave an original source, Lady Eleanor Smith's own book, Life's a Circus (1939). I wonder if there could be other weird tales hiding in the pages of that book.

Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley