Leavenworth MacNab (1872-1933)

Archibald Leavenworth MacNab
Author, Poet, Newspaperman
Born December 21, 1872, Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada
Died June 25, 1933, Illinois Masonic Hospital, Sullivan, Illinois

Archibald Leavenworth MacNab was born on December 21, 1872, in Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada. His parents were Alexander MacNab and Margaret (McArthur) MacNab. MacNab was educated at the University of Toronto. He came to the United States in June 1895 and was naturalized as an American citizen on May 25, 1923, at the age of fifty.

MacNab dropped his first name, sometimes or often, and went by Leavenworth MacNab. He worked as a newspaper reporter in San Francisco for ten years or more. He reported on the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906. MacNab also worked for the St. Louis Globe Democrat, the Chicago Chronicle, and The Music Trades. He also contributed to The Argonaut.

MacNab had stories in National Magazine and Sunset in the period 1902 to 1904. More than two decades passed before he had his next magazine credits, this according to the list in The FictionMags Index. These were four poems and a short story in Weird Tales, beginning in June 1925.

MacNab's story, "The Hanging of Aspara," isn't a short story so much as a slightly fictionalized piece of reporting. A footnote to the story tells us as much. The reporter in the story is named MacTavish, or Mac, a pretty transparent disguise made by the author. Mac works for a newspaper called only "the News." The subject of the story is Sam Aspara, also known as Sam Sparo or Sam Asparo. Or maybe "Aspara" was just another alias. In any case, he was hanged on April 28, 1905, in New Orleans for the murder of a mafioso named Antonio "Tony" Luciano. You can read more about the whole thing on a website called Mafia Genealogy, published by Justin Cascio, by clicking here. I take all of that to indicate that MacNab worked as a newspaperman in New Orleans, circa 1905.

Archibald L. MacNab died on June 25, 1933, at Illinois Masonic Hospital in Sullivan, Illinois. He was buried at Prospect Cemetery in Toronto, Canada.  

Leavenworth MacNab's Short Story & Poems in Weird Tales
"The Hanging of Aspara" (short story, June 1925)
"Lake Desolation" (poem, Aug. 1927)
"Despair and the Soul" (poem, Nov. 1927)
"Dirge" (poem, Aug. 1928)
"Let Night Have Sway" (poem, Jan. 1929)

Further Reading
A few newspaper articles.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley 

"Mozaika" by Nancy Kilpatrick

Though born in Philadelphia (on May 6, 1946), Nancy Kilpatrick is considered a Canadian author. She has written short stories, novels, and non-fiction. Among her books are tie-ins to the Friday the 13th movie series. She also writes under the name Amarantha Knight. She lives in Canada and teaches short story writing at the George Brown College of Applied Arts and Technology in Toronto. Her story "Mozaika" takes up six and a half pages in the Cosmic Horror Issue of Weird Tales. There is also a full-page main title page with an illustration, one that is used again to fill the last half page of the story.

There isn't any product placement in "Mozaika." That's a relief. The story is set in the present or near future. It's about a woman named Myrna and her attempts to assemble a mosaic as the larger world falls apart outside of her tiny house on its remote half-acre lot. Myrna lives alone, in the boondocks, mostly cut off from the world. That's how she wants it to be. In her isolation, she is like the main characters in "A Ghost Story for Christmas" and "Night Fishing." Unlike those two men, though, she stays in. They go out. Her tiny house is her safe place until it isn't anymore.

Myrna is an artist. Her work on her mosaic is a creative act, an attempt to bring order into the universe and to counteract decline and decay. There is imagery in this story of the forces that oppose her. In a "contusious" sky she sees countless lights. What are they? What do they represent? (If this story were happening now we could say they are drones.) Her grout is "necrotic black." She wipes her tiles with a chamois "like a caring parent tending a child's wound." The only other living characters in her story are her overbearing mother and her sister. As living characters, they only talk on the phone from three hours away. "Mozaika" is almost completely about Myrna and her very detailed work on her mosaic.

Something is going on in the outer world. Living in isolation and working on her art, Myrna is unaware. But her mother tells her that people are dying all over . . . and that they're coming back. Neighbors die. Her sister's baby and husband die, then the sister herself and the mother, too. All of them show up at her door, and they want in. They are like zombies. Like the wider world and humanity in the grip of history, they are in a state of decay, or "decline and fall," as she remembers a departed friend saying. Her work has been to counteract all of that. In that she fails. The creative act, an attempt to emulate God and to impose order against chaos, fails. And what is the horror, the cosmic horror? Entropy, which is horrifying enough in all of its implications.

Original text copyright 2024 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

R.T.M. Scott (1882-1966)-The First Tale of the Prehistoric Past

Reginald Thomas Maitland Scott, Sr.
Aka Maj. R.T.M. Scott
Author, Poet, Military Officer, Lecturer
Born August 14, 1882, Woodstock, Ontario, Canada
Died February 5, 1966, New York, New York

Reginald Thomas Maitland Scott, better known as R.T.M. Scott, was born on August 14, 1882, in Woodstock, Ontario, to Alfred Maitland Scott and Elizabeth Bolby Willson Scott. He matriculated at the Royal Military College at Kingston, Ontario, in 1901 and served as an engineer in India, Ceylon, and Malaysia. During the Great War, he was with the Canadian Expeditionary Force on the Western Front and attained the rank of major.

Scott began his writing career after the war. His first story listed in The FictionMags Index is "Such Bluff as Dreams Are Made Of," in Adventure, April 1, 1920. The leading character in that and more than two dozen more stories is Aurelius "Secret Service" Smith. One unusual aspect of this series is that its various entries were published in many different magazines, including Action Stories, Adventure, The American Magazine, The Black Mask, Collier's, Detective Book Magazine, The Illustrated Detective Magazine, Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories, and others. There was one "Secret Service" Smith story in Detective Tales, in the issue of April/May 1923. Smith also appeared in hardback. Scott also wrote the first two stories in The Spider series, published in the pulp magazine The Spider in October and November 1933.

R.T.M. Scott arrived in the United States on July 28, 1919, five years to the day after the war had begun. He lived in New York City, also in Pasadena, after the war. In 1919-1921, he lectured in those two places on Theosophy and reincarnation. We can speculate that he encountered Theosophy in either India or Ceylon. Southern California was a hotbed, too, for Theosophy and other pseudo-religious, cult-like, and gnostic beliefs. In the 1930s, Scott wrote articles for Mystic Magazine and True Mystic Science with such titles as "In Search of My Own Ghost" and "Astounding True Seances." Scott claimed that his 1931 book The Mad Monk was written under the influence of Rasputin, with whom Scott had established contact through spiritualistic means. The book was dramatized in an episode of the Strange As It Seems radio program in March 1940. (Strange As It Seems was based on the syndicated cartoon panel of the same name, created by John Hix.) In other media, Scott wrote "special material" for the movie You'll Find Out (1940), starring Kay Kyser, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, and Bela Lugosi. The film is a comedy about Spiritualism. Maybe Scott acted as a kind of technical advisor.

Scott's son, also named Reginald Thomas Maitland Scott but nicknamed Robert, followed in his father's footsteps by authoring articles and short stories for Western, detective, and weird menace magazines, from 1930 to 1938. He was also an associate editor at Popular Publications in New York City. Born in Columbo, Ceylon in 1909, Robert Scott served in the Canadian Army during World War II and was killed in an accident after the war, in August 1945. His widow, Susan Ashley Scott, followed him to the grave in 1948. R.T.M. Scott's mother died in the in-between time, in January 1946. It all seems like too much for the survivors to take.

Scott resumed his writing career after the war, but his success was pretty limited. He published several hardbound novels during his career, the last of which seem to have been The Agony Column Murders, from 1946, and The Nameless Ones, from 1947. Both are "Secret Service" Smith stories. R.T.M. Scott died on February 5, 1966, in New York City. He was eighty-three years old.

R.T.M. Scott's Stories in Weird Tales and Detective Tales

Weird Tales

• "Nimba, the Cave Girl" (Mar. 1923)

Detective Tales

• "The Emerald Coffin" (Apr./May 1923)

Further Reading
"Scott, R T M" in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, at the following URL:

https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/scott_r_t_m

R.T.M. Scott's Story:

"Nimba, the Cave Girl" is short story of just three pages and is the first in Weird Tales set in prehistoric times. The place is "a beautiful lake lying between steep-sloping, wood-covered hills," south of what we call James Bay, in Scott's native country of Canada. That's an odd and seemingly irrelevant detail for a story of the distant past. Scott seems to have been attempting to make a concrete connection between the past and the present. I guess that's not surprising considering his interests in Theosophy, reincarnation, and spiritualism. He was pretty specific in his description of the setting for "Nimba, the Cave Girl." I wonder if he knew of exactly such a place in his native province.

Scott's story is violent and gory. You don't want to be the man who wrongs Nimba. I'm sure of that. What she does to Oomba gives new meaning to the word pulp fiction. But if she likes you, you'll be in like Flynn, even if you knock her down and eat all of her food. There are people writing on the Internet about how distasteful it all is, meaning the relationship between Nimba and her newfound man. Let's remember we're talking about cave people here. They don't act like we do. They might even be happy because they don't act like we do.

None of this is to say that "Nimba, the Cave Girl" is without its flaws or even that it's a very good story. Like I said, the setup is odd. Knowing that Scott was into Theosophy and spiritualism makes me wonder whether he considered his story to be simply fiction, or whether he thought of it as a work that exists for the rest of us in that misty territory between fiction and nonfiction or pseudo-nonfiction. Could he have believed that he was channeling Nimba?

There is also in "Nimba, the Cave Girl" a weird fetishism. Not weird as in weird tales but weird as in kinda pervy. Here's the main evidence of that:

    She stood long, viewing the new magnificence of the eastern horizon, her coppery-tanned skin glistening in the sun and her firm young breasts rising and falling as if they, too, saw and wondered in dreamy contemplation. Lithe were her legs and arms, and slender her waist, with hips full big but boy-like in their taper. Her hair was bound with little tendrils into a cue that reached below her waist and then was doubled to keep it off the ground. Sun-burned, its hue was a golden glory. A deep scar marked her face, but this only added to its barbaric beauty.

So her firm, young breasts could almost see and wonder in dreamy contemplation. Okay. Got it.

* * *

I don't know where Scott got the inspiration for his story, but it was preceded by two works written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, "The Cave Girl," which was serialized in The All-Story in 1913, and "The Cave Man," also in All-Story and serialized in 1917. These two stories were collected in a hardbound book called The Cave Girl in 1925. I'm not sure that Scott could have avoided the Burroughs effect once he sat down to write. There was a lot of that in the pulp fiction of the 1910s and for many decades after that.

* * *

There has already been a caveman in the first issue of Weird Tales. He was frozen in a block of ice and revived in "The Ghoul and the Corpse" by G.A. Wells. In "The Ghoul and the Corpse," it is the caveman who travels through time, from his to ours. And it is he who is frightened and horrified by what he finds. In "Nimba, the Cave Girl," there is the opposite situation. We, the readers, are the time travelers. We go from our time to hers, and this time it is we who are horrified, perhaps less by the violence and gore (readers and viewers today love their violence and gore) than by the sexual deal-making between woman and man.

* * *

"Nimba, the Cave Girl" is unique in the first issue of Weird Tales, at least among the eighteen stories I have considered so far. Sixteen of those eighteen are set in the 1800s or 1900s. "The Sequel" by Walter Scott Story, is an exception. I think we can call it a work of historical fiction, taking place as it does, in Italy, in the 1700s or before. However, "The Sequel" is not really an original work. Call it an outlier. Maybe we can pretty well discard it. If we discard it, then only "Nimba, the Cave Girl" remains as a work of historical fiction, except that it's not really historical. It's actually prehistorical. As such, it's the first story in Weird Tales to take place in a fantastical setting. In terms of the cosmos in which we find ourselves (or in which we have lost ourselves), only R.T.M. Scott's tale tells of real, physical things separated from us by great gulfs of time or space.

Except for "The Sequel," all of the other stories so far are set in the United States, Canada, or Alaska, or they are set in Europe during World War I, mostly with Americans as their main characters. (The unnamed German soldier in "The Grave" is an exception.) Even "Nimba, the Cave Girl" is set in what is now Canada. Again, discarding "The Sequel," sixteen of seventeen stories take place in our everyday world. ("The Ghoul And the Corpse" and "The Mystery of Black Jean" by Julian Kilman are admittedly set on its frontiers, especially "The Ghoul and the Corpse.") Not counting stories set outside of the United States, most take place either in the rural South or in or near big cities, including New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. In short, there's very little variety in their setting.

There's also not much variety in the characters depicted or their situations. Most of the characters are not very well developed or very memorable or even very lifelike. They are also mostly normal, everyday, middle-class or working-class Americans. Even the detectives are middle class. For an example of that, read Hamilton Craigie's introductory description of his detective, named Quarrier, in "The Chain." Anyway, there's a kind of sameness to all of it. Edwin Baird, the editor of Weird Tales, remarked on that sameness in "The Eyrie," two months after the debut issue:

     These manuscripts come from all parts of the civilized world, and they come from all sorts of people--lawyers, truck drivers, doctors, farmers' wives, university professors, carpenters, high school girls, convicts, society women, drug fiends, ministers, policemen, novelists, hotel clerks and professional tramps--and one, therefore, would naturally expect their stories to possess a corresponding diversity. But not so. With rare exceptions, all these stories, written by all these different kinds of people, are almost exactly alike.

     Not only do they contain the same general plots and themes--one might understand that--but practically all are written in the same style; all have the same grammatical blunders, the same misspelled words, the same errors in punctuation, the same eccentric quirks of phraseology. After plowing through fifty or so of these stories (and we often read that many in an evening), a man acquires the dazed impression that all are written by the same person. It’s baffling! Why do the minds of these various types of people, living in different parts of the world and moving in dissimilar walks of life, slide comfortably into the same well-worn groove whenever they put their thoughts on paper? We give it up.

So it looks like the authors who contributed to those first few issues of Weird Tales worked almost exclusively with what they had close at hand. They didn't seem ready to make great leaps of the imagination, leaps into greater realms of either time or space. R.T.M. Scott made the leap, though, even if his jumping-off point was his belief in Theosophical, psychic, or occult phenomena, or, more accurately, pseudo-phenomena. Remember this passage from H.P. Lovecraft's preamble to "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926; 1928):

    Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents.

So maybe R.T.M. Scott opened a door in Weird Tales. If he did, then others would soon enough walk through it, including Lovecraft.

Lacking an image for R.T.M Scott and his "Nimba, the Cave Girl," I offer this one instead, for Edgar Rice Burroughs' story "The Cave Girl" in The All-Story, July 1913, with cover art by Clinton Pettee.

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Julian Kilman (1878-1954)-The First Canadian Author

Pseudonym of Leroy Noble Kilman
Attorney, Government Worker, Author, Lecturer/Public Speaker, Lepidopterist, Angler
Born March 26, 1878, Drummondville, Ontario, Canada
Died April 3, 1954, at home, Gulfport, Florida

Julian Kilman was the pen name of Leroy Noble Kilman and the author of dozens of stories published in magazines from 1913 to 1934, plus nonfiction articles that appeared in newspapers and magazines even after he retired. Born in Drummondville, Ontario, Canada, on March 26, 1878, he was descended from United Empire Loyalists who fled the United States when it was still a young country. His parents were Alva Hamilton Kilman, a schoolteacher, and Ida M. (Noble) Kilman. As a boy, Kilman collected insects with his father. He would return to that hobby after retiring to Florida in the 1940s.

Kilman came to the United States in 1898 and was naturalized in 1904. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1905 with a law degree and went to work for the U.S. Department of Justice as an assistant district attorney. In 1914, he transferred to the Department of Labor, eventually to become district director of naturalization for western New York State and part of Pennsylvania. He was based in Buffalo, New York. Kilman retired either in 1933 or 1935. In 1910, he married Cecile Gauntlett, a teacher of Latin, in her native state of Michigan. They enjoyed many long years together. Their son was named Julian N. Kilman.

Kilman's earliest story in The FictionMags Index is "Dan Alders' Revenge," published in Short Stories in September 1913. His writing career picked up again in April 1920, when his story "The Peculiar Affair at the Axminster" appeared in The Black Mask. He had half a dozen stories in that title, all under his pen name Julian Kilman. Still more stories by Kilman appeared in The American Boy, The Atlantic Monthly, Brief Stories, Complete Story Magazine, The Double Dealer (published in New Orleans), Echo, People's Story Magazine, The Smart Set, 10 Story Book, and other titles. His last listed in The FictionMags Index is "The Trap" in Top-Notch, March 1934.

Julian Kilman had five stories in all in Weird Tales, all in its first year in print. In fact, Kilman was one of only two authors with stories in each of the first four issues of the magazine. The other was New Englander Hamilton Craigie. He also had a story in Detective Tales, "For Empire," in October 1923. Kilman admired O. Henry, Rudyard Kipling, Anton Chekhov, and Joseph Conrad. In the 1920s, at around the time Weird Tales made its debut, he was a member of a writer's group in Buffalo called "Scriptories."

Kilman seems to have retired from writing short stories at around the same time that he retired from his regular job. As he explained to a Florida newspaper in 1953:

"The average short story writer has about 10 years of production and then finds he's written himself out. With times changing, new writers come up fast. They have new experiences and have plenty to write about. The older writer must then turn to longer stories or novels or quit. I chose the last."

Even after retiring to Florida, he continued writing nonfiction articles for sports magazines, all or mostly about fishing. He also amassed a collection of butterflies and traded specimens with collectors from all over the world.

Leroy N. Kilman died on April 3, 1954, at home, in Gulfport, Florida. He was survived by his wife and children. He was seventy-six years old.

Julian Kilman's Stories in Weird Tales and Detective Tales

Weird Tales

• "The Mystery of Black Jean" (Mar. 1923)
• "The Affair of the Man in Scarlet" (Apr. 1923)
• "The Golden Caverns" (May 1923)
• "The Well" (June 1923)
• "The Black Patch" (Sept. 1923)

Detective Tales

• "For Empire" (Oct. 1923)

Further Reading

• "Demand for Mystery Plots Never Lags, Asserts Kilman" in the Buffalo News, April 5, 1923, page 38, coincident with the publication of the second issue of Weird Tales, in which he had a story.
• "Boyhood Hobby Provides Pleasure for Ex-Lawyer" by George Bartlett in the St. Petersburg Times, June 21, 1953, page 4F.
• Julian Kilman is also in a blog called Lesser-Known Writers, conducted by Douglas A. Anderson. The date was March 30, 2012. For those who aren't familiar with it, Mr. Anderson began writing his blog in June 2011, about seven weeks after I began mine. His is similar in format to mine, but whereas I have focused on writers and artists who have contributed to Weird Tales, Douglas Anderson has looked at a wider range of authors.

Julian Kilman's Story:

"The Mystery of Black Jean" is a funny and ironic mystery story that reads like a folklore account. It is told in the first person by a witness to the events of the story. The witness was a boy when it all happened. He's now a man, and he addresses his story to unnamed listeners--and to us, the readers. "The Mystery of Black Jean" is set in Canada. The man Jean of the title is a big French Canadian with two pet bears that he sometimes wrestles, sometimes makes work for him, and sometimes treats with great cruelty. Black Jean also has two women in his life, and thereby hangs a tale. I won't go into the specifics of Kilman's story. You should read it yourself. It won't take long. I have to say, though, that his is the most natural of the four I have covered so far and perhaps the most enjoyable, mostly for its very human angle and its human interest.

Leroy Kilman, aka Julian Kilman, with his wife Cecile and part of his butterfly collection, from "Boyhood Hobby Provides Pleasure for Ex-Lawyer" by George Bartlett in the St. Petersburg Times, June 21, 1953, page 4F. Photo by Johnnie Evans.

Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

J. Schlossel (1902-1977)

Joseph H. Schlossel
Author, Tailor, Metal Plater, Dog Breeder
Born December 21, 1902, New York or Canada
Died December 1 or 4?, 1977, Schodack Landing?, New York

J. Schlossel was Joseph H. Schlossel, a Jewish writer who was born either in New York or Canada, lived in Canada for several years, and wrote just six published stories. Despite his small output, Schlossel has earned a place in the history of science fiction by being the first author known to have written about a trip to the moon monitored on Earth by way of television. His imagination and stories were expansive; he often assumed a cosmic viewpoint, treating whole star systems and vast swaths of time. He wrote an early science fiction story, "Invaders from Outside," for Weird Tales, a magazine otherwise known for fantasy and weird fiction. In fact, all but one of J. Schlossel's stories were published from 1925 to 1928, before the term science fiction even showed up in print. His last published work, "Extra-Galactic Invaders," the title of which echoed that of his first, appeared in print after he had ceased writing for pulp magazines. Sources on the Internet suggest that Schlossel stopped writing because of the coming of the Great Depression. I don't known the source of that claim.

Joseph H. Schlossel was born on December 21, 1902, in New York or Canada to Mr. and Mrs. Hyman Schlossel. Hyman Schlossel was a tailor. His son followed him in that trade. The first and one of the only records I have found on him shows that he crossed from Canada into the United States by way of Niagara Falls in early November 1921. He gave his previous address as Hamilton, Ontario, and his father's address as Buffalo, New York.

As a young man in his twenties, J. Schlossel wrote science fiction and fantasy stories, a half dozen of which were published in Weird Tales and Amazing Stories. The first appeared in January 1925, the last in the spring of 1931. Schlossel's six published stories: 

• "Invaders from Outside" in Weird Tales, January 1925; reprinted August 1938
• "Hurled into the Infinite" (two-part serial) in Weird Tales, June-July 1925
• "A Message From Space" in Weird Tales, March 1926
• "The Second Swarm" in Amazing Stories Quarterly, Spring 1928; reprinted in Science Fiction Classics, Summer 1968
• "To The Moon by Proxy" in Amazing Stories, October 1928
• "Extra-Galactic Invaders" in Amazing Stories Quarterly, Spring 1931

After the last, he fell silent as a published author. I would like to think that there are unpublished manuscripts by J. Schlossel still out there in the world.

Joseph Schlossel is supposed to have worked in the metal-plating business. He was also a dog breeder. Disaster and tragedy struck in March 1969 when thirty-seven of his French poodles were killed in a house fire in Schodack Landing, New York. At the time, Schlossel lived across the street from the 100-year-old house in which he had kept his dogs.

Schlossel married Ora Alpha Jarvis (1913-1990) of Charleston, West Virginia. She had earned a B.S. degree from the University of Buffalo in 1937 and an M.S. degree from Columbia University in about 1939-1940. She worked for the Farmers Home Administration (FHA) in Ocala, Florida, in the 1950s and as a civil servant, eventually as a senior accountant, for the State of New York. The couple had a daughter whom I believe is still working as a teacher and psychologist.

Joseph Schlossel died on December 1 or 4, 1977, presumably in Schodack Landing, New York, where he had lived for many years. He was seventy-four years old.

J. Schlossel's Stories in Weird Tales
See the list above.

Further Reading
See the entries on Schlossel in:

• The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
• Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Wikipedia

J. Schlossel hit the jackpot when his first published story, "Invaders from Outside," landed on the cover of Weird Tales in January 1925. It was an early science fiction story for the magazine, preceding Nictzin Dyalhis' "When the Green Star Waned" by three months. The image of the space alien with large, slanted eyes and pointed ears was prescient. I wonder whether this was the first such image to appear on the cover of a pulp magazine in America. Whether so or not, credit the artist, Andrew Brosnatch. 

Text copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Charles Gordon Booth (1896-1949)

Author, Screenwriter

Born February 12, 1896, Manchester, Lancashire, England

Died May 22, 1949, Beverly Hills, California

Charles Gordon Booth may have been unique among contributors to "The Unique Magazine" in that he won an Academy Award for his writing. He was born on February 12, 1896, in Manchester, England. His father, William Booth, died in 1901. His mother, Emily Ada Hill Booth, took her son to Canada in 1904. Booth received his schooling in Toronto and Winnipeg and was working as a stenographer for a lumber company in Norwood, Manitoba, when he enlisted in the Canadian Army on March 3, 1916, in Winnipeg. His unit, the 203rd Battalion, called the Winnipeg Rifles, shipped out for England in October 1916. Booth was discharged in 1917 and was evidently sick or wounded, as he spent seventeen months in the hospital following his discharge. In 1922, he immigrated to the United States, taking his mother with him. They first went to Washington, then to San Diego. Charles Gordon Booth lived in southern California for all or most of the rest of his life. He became a naturalized citizen in 1930. At the time he was living in Ocean Beach, California.

Charles G. Booth was the author of scores of stories published between 1921 and 1944. He contributed to The Black Mask, Clues, Detective Story Magazine, Fawcett's Triple-X Magazine, Flynn's, Holland's, MacLean's, Munsey's, Mystery Stories, Open Road, Overland, Pall Mall, Pearson's Life, People's Popular Monthly, Sunset, Western Story Magazine, and many other titles. His lone story for Weird Tales was "Dust of Shun-Ti," from October 1925. He also wrote novels, mostly in the genres of crime and mystery. All but the last were published in the United States (first date below), and all were published in the country of their author's birth (second date below).

• Sinister House: A Mystery Story of Southern California (1926, 1927)
• Gold Bullets (1929, 1929)
• Murder at High Tide (1930, 1930)
• Those Seven Alibis (1932, 1933)
• The Cat and the Clock (1935, 1938)
• The General Died at Dawn (1937, 1941)
• Mr. Angel Comes Aboard (1944, 1946)
• Kings Die Hard (London, 1949)

Booth's stories were adapted to the screen beginning in 1936. He also wrote or cowrote several screenplays and won an Oscar for The House on 92nd Street, a semi-documentary spy movie from 1945. His movie credits:

• The General Died at Dawn (1936)--Based on his story
• The Magnificent Fraud (1939)--Based on his story
• Hurricane Smith (1941)--Based on his story
• Sundown (1941)--Screenplay with Barré Lyndon
• The Traitor Within (1942)--Based on his story
• The House on 92nd Street (1945)--Screenplay with Barré Lyndon
• Johnny Angel (1945)--Based on "Mr. Angel Comes Aboard"
• Behind Green Lights (1946)--Screenplay with Scott Darling
• Strange Triangle (1946)--Screenplay
• Fury at Furnace Creek (1948)--Screenplay
• Moon Over Parador (1988)--Based on "Caviar for His Excellency"

Charles Gordon Booth was married to Lillian Lind Booth Foley (1904-1996). He died on May 22, 1949, in Beverly Hills at age fifty-three. He and his wife, who survived him by nearly a half century, were buried at Twin Falls Cemetery, in Twin Falls, Idaho.

Charles Gordon Booth's Story in Weird Tales

"Dust of Shun-Ti" (Oct. 1925)

Further Reading

"Charles G. Booth" by Steve on the blog Bear Alley Books, Oct. 26, 2015, here. Much of the information here is from Steve's blog posting. Thank you, Steve.

Text copyright 2016, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Leslie Gordon Barnard (1890-1961)

Author, Editor
Born 1890, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Died October 28, 1961, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Leslie Gordon Barnard was a prolific author of short stories from the pulp days of 1920 to the era of men's magazines of the early 1960s. He was born in 1890 in Montréal, Canada, and began writing at an early age. Barnard served as an officer in the Canadian military during World War I and was editor of The War Pictorial: The Leading Pictorial Souvenir of the Great War (three volumes, Montreal: Dodd-Simpson Press, 1914-1915). He had stories in leading Canadian magazines, including Canadian Home Journal, The Canadian Magazine, Family Herald, MacLean's, and National Home Monthly. The FictionMags Index lists scores more published in Adventure, The American Magazine, Argosy All-Story Weekly, Detective Story Magazine, Manhunt, Munsey's, Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine, Street & Smith's Western Story Magazine, Suspense, 20-Story Magazine, Weird Tales, and one of my favorite magazine titles, The Modern Priscilla, among others. His character Mr. Philibus ran in Detective Fiction Weekly and Detective Story Magazine from 1928 to 1935. 

Barnard was the author of three books, One Generation Away (1931), Jancis (1935), and So Near is Grandeur (1945). His stories were adapted to television on 1958 General Electric Theater ("At Miss Minner's," 1958) and The Loretta Young Show ("Woodlot," 1961). In addition, he served as president of the Canadian Authors Association and of the Montréal branch of the international PEN Club. Leslie Gordon Barnard died on October 28, 1961, in Toronto and was buried at Mount Royal Cemetery in Montréal.

Leslie Gordon Barnard's Story in Weird Tales

"The Man in the Taxi" (Nov. 1937)

Further Reading

"Authorship Joys and Sorrows Told," Montréal Gazette, October 29, 1930, page 6, here.

Obituary, New York Times, October 31, 1961.

Leslie Gordon Barnard was editor of the three-volume War Pictorial published during the Great War.

In happier times, he contributed to pulp magazines. Cover by John A. Coughlin (1885-1943).

Barnard's career was long and fruitful. He continued having his stories published into the digest era and even in foreign-language editions.

His stories were also published in British magazines, such as The Strand.

Text copyright 2016, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Gertrude Macaulay Sutton (1887-1979)

Gertrude Forster Macaulay Sutton

Author, Poet

Born October 16, 1887, Québec, Canada

Died September 19, 1979, presumably in Montréal, Québec, Canada

Update (Dec. 5, 2021): I first wrote on Gertrude Macaulay Sutton in 2015 when there was less information about her on line. The picture is a lot clearer now, but I will leave what I wrote before but with some updated information.

[From 2015:] Links in a broken chain:

A Miss Gertrude Macaulay, possessor of a "full and well-trained contralto," received coverage in The Sketch, March 16, 1898, page 322, including a photograph showing her as a full-grown woman, perhaps in her twenties.

Almost certainly the same Gertrude Macaulay, a contralto, having returned from Canada, advertised for singing engagements and to receive and visit students, giving her address as Park Court Mansions, Clapham Park, S.W., [London] in The Musical Times (Vol. 49, 1908).

On July 21, 1908, a Miss Gertrude Macaulay performed at St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, 112a Queen Victoria Street, E.C., [London].

[New information shows that this Gertrude was not our Gertrude. So, more from 2015, with a few pieces of updated information:]

A Gertrude F. Macaulay, age 28 years, 5 months, arrived in New York aboard the Orduna on March 20, 1916, from Liverpool. Given her age and the apparent age of the previously mentioned Gertrude Macaulay, I assume that these were two different women and that the second, the passenger on the Orduna, was the writer for Weird Tales.

A Gertrude Macaulay, daughter of President T.B. Macaulay of the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada, contributed to the war effort during World War I by preparing 700 puddings per week for wounded British soldiers in the Mary Lady Gerhardt Hospital in London. "Broken in health," she retreated to New York, arriving on April 6, 1916. The soldiers had awarded her "the Cuisine Cross de Pudding, the highest military honor conferred on civilians by wounded British soldiers." (From The Insurance Field--Life Edition, Apr. 14, 1916, p. 12.)

T.B. Macaulay--Thomas Bassett Macaulay (June 6, 1860-1942)--was a Canadian actuary, philanthropist, and farmer. According to Wikipedia, "It has been estimated that most of the world's Holstein cattle descend from Macaulay's herd." Macaulay married Henrietta Maria Louisiana Bragg (1857-1910) in 1881. She was a native of Louisiana. Henrietta died in 1910 and was buried in Montréal. The following year, her widowed husband pushed to have Canada annex the Bahamas.

A Gertrude F. Macaulay wrote a piece called "Only a 'Case'" for the journal Nurse (Vol. 5, 1916), in which she seems to have had some familiarity with nursing and hospitals in England during the war.

A Gertrude F. Macaulay of Montreal was listed as a member in Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research (Vol. 12, 1918).

A Gertrude F. Macaulay, presumably the same woman, wrote an article called "The Source of Inspiration" in The Editor (May 25, 1918, pp. 345+), quoting from F.H.W. Myers' Human Personality and Its Survival after Bodily Death (1903). Frederick William Henry Myers (1843-1901) was the founder of the Society for Psychical Research in 1882.

June 23, 1923: A wedding announcement from the Vancouver Daily World (June 23, 1923, p. 9): "Sutton-Macaulay--Relatives of Miss Gertrude F. Macaulay here and in New Westminster have received the news of her marriage in Montreal to Mr. Cecil Arthur Sutton, of London, England. The bride, given in marriage by her father, Mr. T.B. Macaulay, wore a French robe of ivory tinted ninon stamped with a design in velvet, enriched by a court train of net embroidered in silver, the draperies, like the veil, caught with knots of orange blossom. Lilies of the valley and Ophelia roses composed the bouquet she carried. There were three attendants: the bride's cousin, Miss Edith Cushing, and her niece, Nancy Hale, and Kathryn Owen, of Detroit. All were dressed alike in almond green crepe sashed with black velvet and wore fillets of tulle. Mr. W. E. MacFarlane was best man. After a honeymoon in the Catskills, Mr. and Mrs. Sutton will live at 4002 Montrose Avenue, Montreal."

In an article from the Winnipeg Tribune (Jan. 31, 1930), Gertrude MacAulay [sic] Sutton was described as "a brilliant, vivid, young Canadian writer, who has in the past two years achieved literary distinction." If she was the passenger on the Orduna, she would have been, in 1930, about forty-two years old.

The FictionMags Index lists the following works by Gertrude F. Macaulay:

• "And the Devil Laughed" in The Smart Set (short story, Jan. 1912)
• "Sated" in The Cavalier (poem, Feb. 3, 1912)
• "A Splash of Scarlet" in The Smart Set (short story, May 1915)
• "The Girl in the Mirror" in The Parisienne (miscellaneous, July 1915)
• "The Sale of a Face" in The Smart Set (short story, July 1915)
• "The Artist" in The Smart Set (poem, Aug. 1916)
• "Her Typical Experience" in The Smart Set (short story, Aug. 1916)
• "Sweet as First Love" in The Smart Set (miscellaneous, Jan. 1918)
• "Her Men" in The Smart Set (short story, Nov. 1918)

and the following by Gertrude Macaulay Sutton:

• "Theft from the Devil" in The Delineator (short story, July 1928)
• "Indifference Is Filthy" in Maclean's (short story, Jan. 1, 1930)
• "Private Angel" in Woman's Home Companion (short story, Feb. 1930)
• "Gesture" in Weird Tales (short story, Sept. 1930)
• "Mrs. Falconer’s Private Conscience" in The Canadian Magazine (short story, Nov. 1930)
• "Beauty Parade" in The Delineator (short story, Sept. 1931)
• "In the House of My Friends" in The Canadian Magazine (short story, Nov. 1932)
• "Husbands Can Be Managed" in Canadian Home Journal (short story, Apr. 1933)
• "No Clue Left" in This Week (short story, July 28, 1935)

"Gesture" was her lone story for Weird Tales. "Theft from the Devil" won her a first prize in a competition for short stories by the Montreal Branch of the Canadian Authors' Association in 1927.

Old St. Andrews Parish Church of Charleston, South Carolina, an Anglican church, had among its parishioners Cecil Arthur Sutton (Oct. 25, 1884-Feb. 25, 1960), "Son of William Francis and Margaret Little Sutton [and] Beloved Husband of Gertrude Macaulay." Sutton was buried in the church cemetery.

And that's all I have found.

Update (Dec. 5, 2021): And now I have more:

Gertrude Forster Macaulay or MacAulay was born on October 16, 1887, in Québec, Canada, to Thomas Bassett Macaulay (June 6, 1860-1942) and Henrietta Maria Louisiana Bragg (1857-1910). Her father was Canadian, her mother American. She attended McGill University, presumably graduating in 1907. In her yearbook, she was described as an "[e]fficient hockey captain" and a "clever reporter." Her home at the time was Westmount, an enclave of wealthy English-speaking people located on the Island of Montreal. She wrote a number of stories, listed above, published in both Canadian and American magazines from 1912 to 1935. She married Cecil Arthur Sutton (Oct. 25, 1884-Feb. 25, 1960) in 1923, and although her writing career continued for at least a dozen years after being married, I have nothing for her after 1935.

Gertrude lived a very long life. I finally have her death date from Randal A. Everts and the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. The latter informed the former that death notices for Gertrude Macauley Sutton appeared in the Montreal Star (p. B5) and The Gazette (p. 41) on September 20, 1979. She had died the previous day, September 19, 1979, at age ninety-two.

Gertrude Macaulay Sutton's Story in Weird Tales

"Gesture" (Sept. 1930)

Further Reading

There is a good deal on the Internet about Gertrude's father, Thomas Bassett Sutton, but only a little about her.

Gertrude Macaulay and friend, 1910, Mount Victoria Farm, Hudson, Quebec. I believe Gertrude is on the left. She was five feet, six or seven inches tall; the woman on the left appears to be the taller of the two.

Update (Dec. 5, 2021): Here is her yearbook picture, from Old McGill, the yearbook of McGill University, 1907. Dorothy McIlwraith (1891-1976), later editor of Weird Tales, also attended McGill University but graduated in 1914, well after Gertrude. I wouldn't rule out that they knew each other, though.

Thanks to Randal A. Everts and the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec for more information on the death of Gertude Macauley Sutton.

Thanks also to Brian Busby (see his comment below) for more information on the young Gertrude.

Text copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Josie McNamara Lydon (1865-1948)

Poet, Lyricist

Born September 7, 1865, Canada

Died March 12, 1948, Los Angeles, California

Josephine McNamara, nicknamed Josie, was born on September 7, 1865, in Canada, and arrived in the United States in 1868. Her husband was Patrick R. Lydon of West Virginian. The Lydons lived in Denver and Englewood, Colorado, in Silver City, Idaho, and in Glendale, California.

Josie was a poet and lyricist. She wrote the words for "God Guide Our President" (1915). The music was provided by ragtime composer Theodore H. Northrup (1866-1919). She was published in Evenings with Colorado Poets: An Anthology of Colorado Verse, edited by Francis Shanor Kinder and Frank C. Spencer (Denver: World Press, 1926) and in Weird Tales. Her lone poem for the magazine was "White Lilies" from December 1927. Josie McNamara Lydon died on March 12, 1948, in Los Angeles, California, and was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale.

Josie McNamara Lydon's Poem in Weird Tales

"White Lilies" (Dec. 1927)

Further Reading

None known.

Text copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley