Frank Owen's Books

The Encyclopedia of Fantasy by John Clute and John Grant (1999) describes Frank Owen as follows:

US author and editor, husband of Ethel Owen. He wrote 10 mildly salacious novels in the 1930s as Roswell Williams, sometimes listed erroneously as his real name. FO is best-know for mannered tales of the Orient. (p. 739)

According to that source, his works fall into the category of fantasy and fable, some with supernatural elements. The Encyclopedia is right in saying that Owen's real name was not Roswell Williams but wrong in saying Ethel Owen was his wife. She was in fact his older sister. Following is an incomplete list of Frank Owen's books:

• Coat Tales from the Pockets of the Happy Giant (with Ethel Owen, collection, New York: The Abingdon Press, 1927)
• The Dream Hills of Happy Country (with Ethel Owen, collection, New York: The Abingdon Press, 1928)
• Games in Rhyme (with Ethel Owen, illustrated by M. Farini, New York: C.R. Gibson and Company, 1929)
• The House Mother (New York: Lantern Press, 1929)
• Pale Pink Porcelain (1929)
• The Wind that Tramps the World: Splashes of Chinese Color (collection, New York: Lantern Press, 1929)
• The Purple Sea: More Splashes of Chinese Color (collection, New York: Lantern Press, 1930)
• Wind Blown Stories (with Ethel Owen, collection, illustrated by George T. Tobin, New York: The Abingdon Press, 1930)
• Della Wu, Chinese Courtezan and Other Oriental Love Tales (collection, New York: Lantern Press, 1931)
• Rare Earth (New York: The Lantern Press, 1931)
• The Blue Highway (with Ethel Owen, collection, illustrated by George T. Tobin, The Abingdon Press, 1932)
• Madonna of the Damned (as by Roswell Williams, 1935)
• Lovers of Lo Fab (as by Roswell Williams, 1935 or 1936)
• Between the Covers (New York: The Macaulay Company, 1938)*
• A Husband for Kutani (collection, New York: Lee Furman, 1938)
• The Scarlet Hill (New York: Carlyle House, 1941)
• Morris the Midget Moose (children's book, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1945)*
• The Porcelain Magician: A Collection of Oriental Fantasies (collection, illustrated by Frances E. Dunn, New York: Gnome Press, 1948)

*I can't be sure that these books were by our Frank Owen, who should not be confused with the Welsh military officer, author, and newspaperman, nor with the American cartoonist (1907-1971) of the same name.

In addition to writing books, Frank Owen was an editor. Many of these books are from the Teen-Age Library series published by Lantern Press and/or Grosset and Dunlap. The following list may or may not be complete:

• The Bedside Bonanza (New York: Frederick Fell Company, 1944)
• Murder for Millions: A Harvest of Horror and Homicide (New York: Frederick Fell Company, 1946)
• Teen-Age Companion (illustrated by Carl Cobbledick, 1946)
• Fireside Mystery Book (New York: Lantern Press, 1947)
• Teen-Age Baseball Stories (1947)
• Teen-Age Outdoor Stories (1947)
• Teen-Age Sports Stories (1947)
• Teen-Age Basketball Stories (1948)
• Teen-Age Football Stories (1948)
• Teen-Age Mystery Stories (illustrated by Carl Cobbledick, New York: Lantern Press, 1948)
• Teen-Age Stories of Action (1948)
• Teen-Age Winter Sports Stories (1949)
• Teen-Age Victory Parade (1950)
• Teen-Age Winter Sports Stories (Grosset Dunlap, 1950)
• Baseball Stories (paperback, Lantern Press, 1964)

Ethel Owen, Frank Owen's sister and sometime co-author, was born in August 1890 in New York, probably in Brooklyn. In addition to writing books with her younger brother, Ethel also wrote books on her own, many about parties for young people, some about more adult topics. Here is a partial list:

• A Book of Original Parties (1925)
• Parties That Are Different (1926)
• The Pumpkin People (1927)
• Hallowe'en Tales and Games (illustrated by Eleanore Mineah Hubbard, Chicago: A. Whitman and Company, 1928)
• Wish for Tomorrow (New York: Robert Speller Publishing Corp, 1936)
• The Abingdon Party Book (1937)
• Romance in the Rain (New York: Green Circle Books, 1937)
• Some One Shall Love Me (New York: Lee Furman, 1939)
• Unwilling Bride (Astro Books #9, 1948)
• Confessions of a Good-Time Girl (Astro Books #10, 1948)
• A Year of Recreation

Ethel Owen died on November 17, 1946, at age fifty-six. Her obituary--an incomplete obituary taken from the online archive of the New York Times--from November 18, 1946:

OWEN, Ethel, on Sunday, Nov. 17, 1946, devoted sister of Frank Owen, Mrs. Andrew Rankine and Mrs. Paul F. Pinkham. Service at her residence, 204 Weirfield St., Brooklyn . . . .

Here are some other sources from the Times on the Owen family. The transcriptions may not be entirely accurate:

Deaths

OWEN, Friday, March 25, 1938, Agnes A., beloved daughter of Henrietta and the late Henry Owen, sister of Margaret, Ethel, Ralph H., and Frank Owen, Mrs. Andrew Rankine and Mrs. Paul F. Pinkham. Services at her residence, 204 Weirfield Ave., Brooklyn. (Mar. 27, 1938)

Wills for Probate

OWEN, AGNES A. (March 25). Estate $4,800 personal. To mother, Henrietta Owen, 204 Weirfield St. Frank Owen, 204 Weirfield St., executor. (Apr. 6, 1938)

And Frank Owen's own obituary:

Frank Owen, Author, 75; Editor of Mystery Books

Frank Owen, an author who also wrote under the pen names Roswell Williams and Richard Kent, died Sunday after a long illness at his home, 21 Adler Place, Brooklyn. He . . . . (Oct. 15, 1968)

So what are we to make of the oeuvre of Frank Owen? He was a very prolific and seemingly reliable author for Weird Tales, yet his stories have very seldom been reprinted during the intervening years. It's true that they appeared in hardbound editions in the 1920s and '30s, even as most of his contemporaries were still hacking their way through the pulp jungle. But most were reprinted for the first and last time more than seventy years ago. Even if your library is well stocked, you might have a hard time coming up with even one of them. According to my recent email correspondent, E. Hoffman Price (another Orientalist) considered Owen "a fine writer," but how are we to know? If nothing else, "The Wind That Tramps the World," Owen's most popular story for Weird Tales, should be generally available. Instead, it has been reprinted only in Weird Tales #3, edited by Lin Carter, from 1981, a book that is hard to come by. (1) Ten authors are ahead of Frank Owen in the number of stories they wrote for Weird Tales. All but Allison V. Harding have had their stories reprinted again and again. (2) Most have their own large following of diehard fans. So what of Frank Owen? Is he a neglected author? Or is there something else going on? These are no mere rhetorical questions. We should know their answer.

Notes

(1) The title by the way is from the poem "Sestina of the Tramp-Royal" by Rudyard Kipling (1896).

(2) Allison V. Harding is a special case. There is reason to believe that stories by that pseudonymous author received special treatment in being published in Weird Tales.

You don't have to take my word for it. Here is an inscription from Ethel Owen:

July 23, 1936
To Frank Owen
My Brother
My Collaborator
My Fellow-Novelist
My Artist
and
A pretty good guy
Ethel Owen

Note: The illustration on the dust jacket of The Purple Sea is initialed "HR." I assume that to have been Hugh Rankin, an illustrator for Weird Tales.

Text copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Frank Owen's Stories and Poems

If The FictionMags Index is accurate and complete, then Frank Owen's writing career began with a story called "Broken to the Halter" in Young's Magazine for January 1915. Owen was then twenty-two years old. Over the next two decades, he wrote thirty stories for Young's, Lippincott's, Snappy Stories, Breezy Stories, Brief Stories, Droll Stories, and other story magazines and pulp magazines. Following is a list taken from The FictionMags Index (with punctuation added):

Frank Owen's Stories in Story Magazines and Pulp Magazines, 1915-1934

• "Broken to the Halter" in Young’s Magazine (Jan. 1915)
• "The Undecided Woman" in Lippincott’s Magazine (Feb. 1915)
• "Without Rehearsal" in Snappy Stories (Sept. #2 1915)
• "Plated Ware" in Young’s Magazine (Nov. 1915)
• "Whirlpools" in Breezy Stories (Jan. 1917)
• "The Yellow Pool" in Brief Stories (Nov. 1923)
• "The Black Well of Wadi" in Brief Stories (Jan. 1924)
• "The Show Girl" in Breezy Stories (June #1 1924)
• "The Exhibition" in Brief Stories (July 1924)
• "The High Note of the Chorus" in Droll Stories (July 1924)
• "A Lady in His Room" in Droll Stories (Aug. 1924)
• "The Meteor" in Brief Stories (Sept. 1924)
• "The Town-Painter" in Droll Stories (Feb. 1925)
• "Short Turns" in Breezy Stories (May #1 1925)
• "His New Model" in Artists and Models Magazine (May 1925)
• "Hard Lines" in Droll Stories (July 1925)
• "My China Girl" in Brief Stories (Aug. 1925)
• "Sleepy Eyes" in Droll Stories (Jan. 1926)
• "Making Emma Bad" in Droll Stories (Mar. 1926)
• "Encore" in Droll Stories (Apr. 1926)
• "Slow Curtain" in Droll Stories (May 1926)
• "Broadwayfarers" in Droll Stories (Apr. 1927)
• "Pale Pink Porcelain" in Mystery Magazine (Apr. 1927)
• "Bubbles’ Troubles" in Droll Stories (May 1927)
• "A Safe and Sane Fourth" in Young’s Realistic Stories Magazine (May 1927)
• "The Settlement Worker" in Droll Stories (June 1927)
• "Hope of Broadway" in Sweetheart Stories (Sept. 6, 1927)
• "The Slip Knot" in Cabaret Stories (Sept. 1928)
• "Divorce Party" in Honeymoon Stories (Dec. 1933)
• "Intrusion" in The Underworld Magazine (Mar. 1934)

About halfway through that stretch, Frank Owen began selling stories and poems to Weird Tales magazine. His first was "The Man Who Owned the World" in the October issue of 1923. His debut in that magazine coincided with the first story by H.P. Lovecraft in Weird Tales, "Dagon," also Seabury Quinn's first story and article.

Frank Owen's career writing for Weird Tales and its companion magazines, Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet Magazine, is not easy to sort out. He contributed stories and poems to all three titles. In doing so, he used three names, his own, plus "Richard Kent" and the unambiguously obscene "Hung Long Tom." All of his stories for Weird Tales were published under his own name, as were two letters he wrote to "The Eyrie." All his poems for Weird Tales were as by the aforementioned Hung Long Tom. As for Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet Magazine, there were three stories with the Richard Kent byline, five stories with the Frank Owen byline, and eighteen poems with the Hung Long Tom byline. In the first few issues of Oriental Stories, he had at least two and as many four works in each issue.

So, for Weird Tales, Frank Owen wrote thirty-four stories and five poems. For Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet Magazine, he wrote eight stories and eighteen poems. All together, then, Frank Owen wrote forty-two stories and twenty-three poems for the three magazines, sixty-five works in all, plus two letters. He was one of few writers to contribute to all three. His thirty-four stories place him as the eleventh most prolific author of stories for Weird Tales, just behind Allison V. Harding, another New Yorker whose work has not very often been reprinted. Here is part of the list from my posting "Who Wrote the Most Stories for Weird Tales?" (Nov. 14, 2011, here):

1. Seabury Quinn, 145 stories and 14 articles
2. August W. Derleth, 101 stories under his own name, plus 13 stories under the pseudonym Stephen Grendon (114 total), plus 22 stories in collaboration with others
3. Edmond Hamilton, 76 stories
4. Robert Bloch, 66
5. Clark Ashton Smith, 63
6. Robert E. Howard, 54
7. H.P. Lovecraft, 49 stories on his own, plus 4 in collaboration with others, not counting revisions and ghost-written stories
8. Manly Wade Wellman, 39 stories on his own, plus 1 in collaboration with others
9. Paul Ernst, 37
10. Allison V. Harding, 36
11. Frank Owen, 34

"The Wind That Tramps the World," from April 1925, was voted the second most popular story of that issue (behind "When the Green Star Waned" by Nictzin Dyalhis). It was reprinted twice in Weird Tales and voted fortieth in popularity of all stories published from 1924 to 1940. It's worth noting that the titles of four of Owen's stories took the form of "The Man Who _____." It's also worth noting that Owen had at least two series characters, John Steppling and Dr. Shen Fu, possessor of an elixir of life. Anyway, here's a list:

Frank Owen's, Richard Kent's, & Hung Long Tom's Stories and Poems in Weird Tales, Oriental Stories, & The Magic Carpet Magazine

(All are stories unless otherwise noted, all are as by Frank Owen unless otherwise noted, and all are in Weird Tales unless otherwise noted.)

1. "The Man Who Owned the World" (Oct. 1923)
2. "The Open Window" (John Steppling, Jan. 1924)
3. "Shadows" (Apr. 1924)
4. "The Man Who Lived Next Door to Himself" (May/June/July 1924)
5. "Hunger" (Feb. 1925)
6. "The Wind That Tramps the World" (John Steppling, Apr. 1925; reprinted June 1929, Fall 1981)
7. "Black Hill" (June 1925)
8. "The Lantern-Maker" (Aug. 1925)
9. "The Yellow Pool" (Oct. 1925)
10. "The Fan" (John Steppling, Dec. 1925)
11. "The Silent Trees" (May 1926)
12. "Seven Minutes" (Oct. 1926)
13. "The Dream Peddler" (Jan. 1927)
14. "The Blue City" (Sept. 1927)
15. "The Purple Sea" (Feb. 1928)
16. "The Tinkle of the Camel's Bell" (Dec. 1928)
17. "The Desert Woman" as by Richard Kent in Oriental Stories (Oct./Nov. 1930)
18. "Singapore Nights" in Oriental Stories (Oct./Nov. 1930)
19. "Flower Profiles" as by Hung Long Tom in Oriental Stories (poem, Oct./Nov. 1930)
20. "The Yellow River" as by Hung Long Tom in Oriental Stories (poem, Oct./Nov. 1930)
21. "The Burning Sea" as by Richard Kent in Oriental Stories (Dec. 1930/Jan. 1931)
22. "The China Kid" in Oriental Stories (Dec. 1930/Jan. 1931)
23. "The Rose" as by Hung Long Tom in Oriental Stories (poem, Dec. 1930/Jan. 1931)
24. "The Rug" as by Hung Long Tom in Oriental Stories (poem, Dec. 1930/Jan. 1931)
25. "Scoundrels by Night" as by Richard Kent in Oriental Stories (Feb./Mar. 1931; reprinted in Short Story Magazine #18, 1946)
26. "Della Wu, Chinese Courtezan" in Oriental Stories (Feb./Mar. 1931)
27. "The Giant" as by Hung Long Tom in Oriental Stories (poem, Feb./Mar. 1931)
28. "Hsun Hsu" as by Hung Long Tom in Oriental Stories (poem, Apr./May/June 1931)
29. "The Mirror" as by Hung Long Tom in Oriental Stories (poem, Apr./May/June 1931)
30. "Song of the Indian Night" in Oriental Stories (Summer 1931)
31. "Yung Chi" as by Hung Long Tom in Oriental Stories (poem, Summer 1931)
32. "The Golden Girl" as by Hung Long Tom in Oriental Stories (poem, Autumn 1931)
33. "Night" as by Hung Long Tom in Oriental Stories (poem, Autumn 1931)
34. "Porcelain" as by Hung Long Tom in Oriental Stories (poem, Autumn 1931)
35. "Yellow Velvet" as by Hung Long Tom in Oriental Stories (poem, Autumn 1931)
36. "The Mystic Rose" as by Hung Long Tom in Oriental Stories (poem, Winter 1932)
37. "The Nanking Road" as by Hung Long Tom in The Magic Carpet Magazine (poem, Jan. 1933)
38. "Gifts" as by Hung Long Tom in The Magic Carpet Magazine (poem, Apr. 1933)
39. "Dancers" as by Hung Long Tom in The Magic Carpet Magazine (poem, July 1933)
40. "The Green Sea" as by Hung Long Tom (poem, Aug. 1933)
41. "Rain" as by Hung Long Tom (poem, Sept. 1933)
42. "The Pool" as by Hung Long Tom in The Magic Carpet Magazine (poem, Oct. 1933)
43. "The Ox-Cart" (Dec. 1933)
44. "Five Merchants Who Met in a Tea-House" in The Magic Carpet Magazine (Jan. 1934)
45. "Rivers" as by Hung Long Tom in The Magic Carpet Magazine (poem, Jan. 1934)
46. "The Lantern" as by Hung Long Tom (poem, Feb. 1934)
47. "Pale Pink Porcelain" (Dec. 1934; 1929)
48. "Tea-Drinking" as by Hung Long Tom (poem, May 1935)
49. "Night Song" as by Hung Long Tom (poem, Sept. 1935)
50. "The Man Who Would Not Die" (Feb. 1936)
51. "The Poppy Pearl" (Feb. 1937)
52. "The Mandarin's Ear" (Aug. 1937)
53. "On Pell Street" (July 1940)
54. "By What Mystic Mooring" (May 1941)
55. "The March of the Trees" (Mar. 1942)
56. "For Tomorrow We Die" (Dr. Shen Fu, July 1942)
57. "The Lips of Caya Wu" (Nov. 1942)
58. "Quest of a Noble Tiger" (Jan. 1943)
59. "The Man Who Amazed Fish" (Dr. Shen Fu, May 1943)
60. "The Street of Faces" (July 1943)
61. "Death in a Gray Mist" (Sept. 1943)
62. "The Long Still Streets of Evening" (Sept. 1944)
63. "The Three Pools and the Painted Moon" (Sept. 1950)
64. "The Old Gentleman with the Scarlet Umbrella" (John Steppling, Jan. 1951)
65. "The Unicorn" (Nov. 1952)

Frank Owen's Letters to "The Eyrie"

May 1943

Sept. 1944

We're not through with the complications just yet. In addition to writing stories published in magazines, Frank Owen also wrote stories published in his own books. I'll start with the books:

The Wind that Tramps the World: Splashes of Chinese Color (New York: Lantern Press, 1929)

• "The Wind That Tramps the World"
• "Pale Pink Porcelain"
• "The Month the Almonds Bloom"
• "The Inverted House"
• "The Blue City"
• "The Frog"
• "The Snapped Willow"

The Purple Sea: More Splashes of Chinese Color (New York: Lantern Press, 1930)

• "The Golden Hour of Kwoh Fan" (reprinted in Avon Fantasy Reader #11, 1949)
• "The Purple Sea"
• "The Silent Trees" (reprinted in Avon Fantasy Reader #3, 1947)
• "The Lantern-Maker"
• "Gobi Interlude"
• "The Perfumes of Chow Wan"
• "The Quaint Manuscript of Wu Wang"
• "The Rice Merchant"
• "Love Letters of a Little House"
• "The Tinkle of the Camel's Bell" (reprinted in Vampire: Chilling Tales of the Undead, ed. by Peter Haining, 1985)
• "The Old Man Who Swept the Sky"

The Porcelain Magician: A Collection of Oriental Fantasies (New York: Gnome Press, 1948)

• Interior artwork by Frances E. Dunn
• Foreword (The Porcelain Magician), an essay by David A. Kyle
• "The Fan"
• "The Inverted House"
• "The Lantern-Maker"
• "The Porcelain Magician"
• "The Purple Sea"
• "The Old Man Who Swept the Sky"
• "Doctor Shen Fu"
• "Pale Pink Porcelain"
• "The Rice Merchant"
• "The Blue City"
• "The Fountain"
• "Monk's Blood"
• "The Golden Hour of Kwoh Fan"
• "The Wind That Tramps the World"

As you can see by comparing titles and dates of publication, some of Owen's stories appeared in Weird Tales and its companion magazines before they were published in hardback, some were published in hardback before appearing in the magazines, some appeared only in magazines, and some appeared only in hardback. (I think. Whew!) In addition, Frank Owen had two stories published in periodicals other than Weird Tales and its companion titles:

• "A Study in Amber" as by Richard Kent in Avon Fantasy Reader #5 (1947)
• "One-Man God" in Avon Fantasy Reader #17 (1951) and in the digest-sized Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader (Jan. 1953)

There have been a few recent re-printings, but all in all, Frank Owen has been largely forgotten by readers of fantasy and weird fiction. I don't know why that should be. Maybe it's time for a new collection of his stories and poems.

Next: Frank Owen's Books

Weird Tales, January 1943, with a cover story by Frank Owen and cover art by A. R. Tilburne.

Copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Frank Owen (1893-1968)

Aka Roswell Williams, Richard Kent, Hung Long Tom
Author, Poet, Editor
Born April 20, 1893, Kings County, New York, presumably in Brooklyn
Died October 13, 1968, Brooklyn, Kings County, New York

Frank Owen was a prolific author, poet, and editor, yet almost nothing is known of him, and what people think they know about him is in many places wrong. First, his name was not really Roswell Williams or Richard Kent. Those were pseudonyms. His real name was Frank Owen. Second, his co-author, Ethel Owen, was not his wife but his sister. His wife's name was Lillian. Frank Owen wrote stories and poems of the Far East, yet his parents came from Wales and he seems to have spent most of his life in Brooklyn. The only exception may have been time spent in the U.S. military, which earned him a place of burial at Long Island National Cemetery, not far from where he was born. The New York Times noticed his passing, yet fans and scholars of pulp fiction seem to have skipped over him, despite the fact that he was number eleven on the list of the most prolific authors in Weird Tales. One of those fans has asked me to find out more on the life and career of Frank Owen. This is what I have discovered.

According to Roger M. Evans on an online genealogical message board, "[i]n 1884, Henry and Henrietta Owens [sic] emigrated to New York from Aberdare in South Wales together with their five children, Agnes (1875), Margaret (1877), Ralph (1880), Gertrude (1881), [and] Florence (1883). Four further children were born in New York: Mabel (1885), Nellie (1888), Ethel (1890), and Frank (1890) [sic]." Mr. Evans inquired about the Owen family, about whom he had found only a little information. A researcher named Nancy answered his inquiry with the following information, with my editing and some additions on birthplaces:

Henry Owen, b. April 1855, in Wales; d. Dec. 13, 1932, Kings County cert. #23985

Henriette [sic] Owen, b. Aug. 1856, in Wales; d. Nov. 10, 1941, Kings County cert. #21782

Their children:

1. Agnes A. Owen, b. Aug. 1875, in Wales; d. Mar. 25, 1938, Kings County cert. #6603
2. Margaret Owen, b. Nov. 1877, in Wales; d. June 24, 1943, Kings County cert. #14040
3. Ralph Owen, b. Feb. 2, 1880, in Wales; married Lillian Ruschmann on Sept. 18, 1906, Kings County cert. #8513; daughter Muriel R. born about 1914; married June 12, 1937, Kings County; Ralph died June 29, 1946, Kings County cert. #13469
4. Gertrude M. Owen, b. Nov. 1881, in Wales; last found in 1920 Census in Kings County
5. Florence Owen, b. July 1885, in England; last found in 1920 Census in Kings County
6. Mabel Owen, b. Oct 1885, in New York; last found in 1920 Census in Kings County
7. Nellie Owen, b. Mar. 1888; last found in 1910 Census Kings County
8. Ethel Owen, b. Aug. 1890, in New York; d. Nov. 17, 1946, Kings County
9. Frank Owen, b. Apr. 20, 1893, in New York; died Oct. 1968, Kings County

So Frank Owen was born on April 20, 1893, in Kings County, New York, presumably in Brooklyn. He was the second son and the youngest child of Welsh immigrants Henry and Henrietta Owen. Mr. Owen was a real estate broker. His daughters were cashiers, waitresses, stenographers, bookkeepers, and secretaries. His son Ralph was a photographer. Frank and Ethel became writers. The Owens seem to have been a tight-knit group. As late as 1920, Mr. and Mrs. Owen shared their home with seven of their children, all of whom were by then well into adulthood.

By 1930, Frank Owen had married and had fathered two sons, Richard (born 1922) and Owen K. Owen (born 1930). Frank's wife was Lillian Owen, a native Pennsylvanian born on February 5, 1898, thus five years his junior. The Owens made their home in Brooklyn. There they were enumerated again in 1940, and there Frank died, at home at 21 Adler Place, on October 13, 1968. He was seventy-five years old. His wife survived him by less than a year, passing away on April 12, 1969, just eight days before his birthday. Both were buried at Long Island National Cemetery in East Farmingdale, New York, in what I believe to be adjoining plots (Plot 2r, 3163 and 3363).

Next: Frank Owen's Stories and Poems.

Original text copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Jim Kjelgaard (1910-1959)-Part 2

Betty Kjelgaard

Author, School Secretary

Born September 1, 1916, Gaines, Tioga County, Pennsylvania

Died December 21, 1977, Tompkins County Hospital, Ithaca, New York

As I indicated in my post from yesterday, a lot of the information on Jim Kjelgaard found on the Internet is incomplete and inaccurate. Here's a good example: Jim Kjelgaard's sister, Betty Kjelgaard, was also a successful writer. Doesn't Betty Kjelgaard figure somewhere in her brother's biography? Shouldn't you be able to find something on her somewhere on the Internet? Not yet I suppose. I'll begin to correct that oversight here.

Betty Marjorie Kjelgaard was born on September 1, 1916, in Gaines, located in Tioga County, Pennsylvania. She was the youngest of six children (I believe). Like her older brother, she wrote stories and published her first before age thirty. They were romances mostly and stories for women and young people, who were then beginning to be called "teenagers." Between 1945 and 1966 (according to what I could find), Betty had her work printed in women's magazines (Family Circle, Ladies Home Journal, McCall's, Redbook, Woman's Day, Woman's Home Companion) and This Week, a syndicated magazine section for the nation's Sunday papers. Her stories also found their way into two books: Teen-Age Companion (1946), edited by Frank Owen, and Hit Parade of Short Stories (Scholastic, 1964). Frank Owen (1893-1968) by the way was a contributor to Weird Tales. He also edited Teen-Age Mystery Stories from 1948.

Betty Kjelgaard had the distinction of having one of her stories, "The End of Night," adapted to television. Frederic Brady wrote the teleplay for a performance on Chevron Hall of Stars in 1956. The last credit I could find for her is an article in Ford Times called "The Lure of the Catskills," from September 1968. Betty Kjelgaard died on December 21, 1977, at Tompkins County Hospital in Ithaca, New York. She was just sixty-one years old.

Teen-Age Companion was aimed at that new creature, the teenager, in 1946. One of the stories inside is by Betty Kjelgaard. 

Another Betty Kjelgaard story appeared in Hit Parade of Short Stories in 1964.

Betty Kjelgaard's fiction was mostly for women's magazines, as in this issue of Woman's Day from September 1966. The illustration is by Andy Virgil. Collectors of Volkswagen art would have been pleased.

This is for Bette, a driver of a Volkswagen.
Updated on December 17, 2021.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley