Adrian Pordelorrar (?-?)

I would like to start out writing about the July 1925 issue of Weird Tales by writing about the last author listed in its table of contents. He or she was Adrian Pordelorrar.

Adrian Pordelorrar was almost certainly a pseudonym. I haven't found anyone by that name or surname in my searches of newspapers and public records. The last name Pordelorrar is unusual to say the least. Nothing comes back for it in an Internet search, either. That makes me think that there is meaning in the name, and so I have tried breaking it apart and entering its parts in an online translator. I had thought that the name could be from the Esperanto, but I didn't get very far in that. Por and del are easy enough. They are prefixes in Spanish. That leaves -orrar as the main part of the name. Orrar isn't a word in Spanish, but llorar is. It means "to cry."

If the last name Pordelorrar has significant meaning, then maybe the given name Adrian does, too. It's an ancient Latin name, a variation of Hadrian or Hadrianus. The root word seems to be adur, meaning "sea" or "water." Together, maybe the poet's name means something like "water of the crying" or "water for the crying." Maybe someone who knows Spanish can propose a better meaning or translation. As an alternative, maybe Adrian refers to the Roman emperor Hadrian as a conqueror as Time seems the conqueror in the poem.

The next step in all of this would seem to be: read the poem. And so here it is, a sonnet:

The Conqueror
By Adrian Pordelorrar 

Dark, even in the sunset's crimson glare,
     There grows, unknown, an ancient forest grove; --
A voice of myst'ry murmurs in its air
     Where Night for centuries has whispered love!
Dim mirrored in a crystal pool, found there,
     Lie strange, forgotten worlds, and things, whereof
One dares not dream. Dark eyes, through matted hair,
     Laugh from its depths, to mock at Life above.

Soft words, from unseen lips, make known their thought--
     The uselessness of lab'ring through the years,
While worlds and men and kingdoms they have wrought,
     Their efforts, and their loves, and secret fears,
Crumble before the sweep of Time, as nought,
     Despite their anguish, and unnoticed tears!

If -lorrar is a play on llorar, referring to crying, and Adrian refers to water also, then the imagery of crying and water in the name of the pseudonymous poet is also in the poem.

We will probably never know who was the author of "The Conqueror," but why not consider Farnsworth Wright as a possibility?

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Lady Anne Bonny (Dates Unknown)

Lady Anne Bonny was the pen name of an unknown author. She had just one story in Weird Tales, a three-part serial called "Wings of Power," published in the issues of January, February, and March of 1925. "Wings of Power" is called a "Pseudo-Scientific Novel" in the table of contents. The pseudonym of the author and the title of the story would seem incongruous, for Anne Bonny was a real person, a lady pirate, active for just a few short months in 1720 when there was no such thing as a "pseudo-scientific story," and almost no science at all. No one knows when or where she was born, nor when or where she died. Lady Anne Bonny the author is unknown, and her namesake lady pirate is very nearly unknown.

"Wings of Power" is a long, melodramatic story with a very full cast of characters. There is a mad-scientist type, Professor Kurt Maquarri, and a damsel in distress, his step-daughter Joan Suffern, who does a lot of sufferin'. The science is nonsense, but pseudoscientific nonsense in a story can be fun sometimes. You just have to give up your knowledge of real science and go along for the ride. I wrote that the author's name and the title of her story would seem incongruous, but the pirate Blackbeard figures in it, though not very prominently. I haven't read the story, only breezed through it, looking for clues as to the author's identity. I didn't find anything conclusive. I also read "The Eyrie" for the months after "Wings of Power" was published. I didn't see any mention of it. I take that to mean that, although no one hated it, also no one loved it. Lady Anne Bonny seems to have come and gone. Did she ever write under her own name?

There's just one thing: in the same issues in which "Wings of Power" was published, there were illustrations by an artist named Jessie Bond, who sometimes used "Bonny" as her nickname, who was also a writer, and who was drawn to the subtropics of Florida and the Bahamas. Anne Bonny the pirate got her start by stealing a ship in the Bahamas. So could Jessie Bond, aka Bonny Bond, have been Lady Anne Bonny? Could she have written in collaboration with someone else, such as Farnsworth Wright?

The heading for part one of "Wings of Power" by Lady Anne Bonny, Weird Tales, January 1925, illustration by Andrew Brosnatch.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Francis Hard (1888-1940)

Pseudonym of Farnsworth Wright
Author, Editor, Poet, Journalist, Translator, Soldier
Born July 29, 1888, Santa Barbara, California
Died June 12, 1940, Manhattan, New York, New York

Francis Hard was Farnsworth Wright. He used that pseudonym while writing stories and poems for magazines of which he was the editor. You could call it a conflict of interest for an editor to place his own works in a publication that he edits. I don't see it that way. An editor should have someone else look at his story or poem before putting it into print. He should also accept "No" or "It needs work" in response. But I think it's okay for an editor to publish his own work, even under his own name. Farnsworth Wright wrote as Francis Hard anyway.

Farnsworth Wright was born on July 29, 1888, in Santa Barbara, California, to George Francis Wright (1848-1892), a civil engineer and a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and Genevieve Hard Wright (1850-1914), a soprano singer and music teacher and an instructor in physical culture. And so already we have an origin for Wright's nom de plume, Francis Hard.

According to his World War I draft card, Farnsworth Wright attended the University of Nevada, where he began his military service. Wright also studied journalism at the University of Washington. (See his yearbook picture below.) His father had served before him in the U.S. Navy. They were descended from Samuel Farnsworth of Groton, Massachusetts, a drummer in Captain Joseph Moor's Company, Colonel William Prescott's Regiment of Massachusetts Militia during the Revolutionary War. Samuel Farnsworth enlisted on May 15, 1775, or less than a month after the war had commenced at Lexington and Concord. He was presumably at the Battle of Bunker Hill less than a month later. On November 9, 1910, the Colorado Society of the Sons of the American Revolution approved Farnsworth Wright's application for membership. Less than eight years later, on September 9, 1918, Private Farnsworth Wright of Company H, 342nd Infantry Regiment, 86th Infantry Division--the Blackhawk Division--shipped out from New York to France aboard the Minnekahda, continuing the Farnsworth and Wright families' records of service to their country.

Wright returned to the United States on August 4, 1919. He had been promoted by then to sergeant. During and after the Great War, Wright had served as a translator in France and I believe in occupied Germany. Before, based in Chicago, he had worked as a newspaper reporter for Musical America Company of New York. He was also, oddly enough, an Esperantist. Music, languages, and culture seem to have come naturally to members of the Wright family.

Farnsworth Wright returned stateside in the same year that Jacob C. Henneberger, late of the U.S. Navy, arrived in Indianapolis. Henneberger also had connections in Chicago. In 1922 (or thereabouts), he formed The Rural Publishing Corporation with a former college classmate, John M. Lansinger. In one way or another, Farnsworth Wright met Henneberger and Lansinger. Wright had a short story, "The Closing Hand," in the first issue of their new magazine, Weird Tales, in March 1923. He had other submissions after that and began working as a reader of manuscripts at some point. Weird Tales and the business behind it foundered in mid-1924. When it came back in November of that year, Farnsworth Wright was full editor. It was then that he began using the name Francis Hard. As Hard, he had five poems and a short story in Weird Tales, plus one story each in it companion titles Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet Magazine, which were really the same magazine with successively different titles.

Francis Hard's career as an author and a poet lasted almost as long as Farnsworth Wright's did as editor. Wright remained in his post until 1940, the year in which he died at age fifty-one. He was buried at Willamette National Cemetery in Oregon. His widow, Marjorie Jeanette Zinkie Wright (1893-1974), joined him there the year after her death.

Francis Hard's Stories & Poems in Weird Tales, Oriental Stories, and The Magic Carpet Magazine
(All were in Weird Tales unless otherwise noted.)
"The Great Panjandrum" (short story; Nov. 1924)
"Two Crows" (poem; Jan. 1925)
"The Dark Pool" (poem; Apr. 1925)
"The Death Angel" (poem; Sept. 1925)
"The Evening Star" (poem; Mar. 1926)
"The White Queen" in Oriental Stories (short story; Nov. 1930)
"The Picture of Judas" in The Magic Carpet Magazine (short story; Apr. 1933)
"After Two Nights of the Ear-Ache" (poem; Oct. 1937)

Above, the University of Washington yearbook pictures of Farnsworth Wright (1888-1940) and his future wife, Marjorie Zinkie (1893-1974), from the 1913-1914 school year. Marjorie Zinkie studied to be a librarian and worked in that capacity in Idaho, Michigan, and Washington State. Together the Wrights had a son, Robert Farnsworth Wright (1930-1993). He and his wife, Ruthora Marie McBride Wright (1930-1993), died within five months of each other in 1993. I can't say whether Farnsworth and Marjorie Wright have any living descendants.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Mary Sharon (1895-1962)

Pseudonym of Henrietta Prouty aka Henrietta Trefon
Author, Poet, Freelance Writer
Born December 29, 1895, Galena, Kansas
Died December 21, 1962, Los Angeles city or county, California

Mary Sharon was the pseudonym of Henrietta Prouty, who was born on December 29, 1895, in Galena, Kansas. Her parents were William Harrison Prouty, a mineworker, and Evalina Melvina "Dolly" (Maitland) Prouty. If I have counted correctly, there were eight Prouty children in all, seven girls and a boy. One of the daughters died on the day she was born.

In reading about Henrietta Prouty and her husband in contemporaneous newspaper accounts, you start to wonder what was true about them and what was mere fancy. Or maybe I should say that you start to realize how little seems to have been true and how much was very likely made up. Did she really know Douglas Fairbanks? Was she really a film actress? Did she really write scenarios and form her own movie production company during the early 1920s? I don't think anyone can say.

And then you run upon a fact:

On May 31, 1919, Henrietta Prouty married a man named Van Simon Trefon (1886-1971) in Los Angeles, California. He was supposed to have been French. In actuality, he was a native of Salonika, Greece. Maybe he was a Frenchman born in Greece.

Then the questions begin again. Did Trefon really arrive in America while working for the Pathé film company? Was he really a stage and movie actor who performed with Madame Petrova, Norma Talmadge, Mary Pickford, and Broncho Billy Anderson? Was he really a linguist, possessing a mastery of ten languages and attaining the rank of captain in the U.S. Army while working in the foreign secret service? Again, I don't think anyone can say.

Neither Mary Sharon nor Van S. Trefon is in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). That may not mean a lot. There are probably myriads of films, actors, directors, photographers, and so on not listed there. Besides that, IMDb has a screwy new format. You can't be sure of finding anything. Mary Sharon or Henrietta Trefon is supposed to have written the scenario for a movie called The Redemption of John Williams in which she was to have played the female lead and her husband was to have been "the heavy lead." Directed by Hoddy Milligan and produced by Ozark Film Company, the movie was shot, in part, in Galena in 1921. Hundreds of people were supposed to have witnessed all of that, but did it really happen? Maybe. Probably. Karl Hoddy Milligan (1881-1951) was a real person. He's listed as a maker of local movies in Main Street Movies: The History of Local Film in the United States by Martin L. Johnson (2018). Maybe The Redemption of John Williams is hiding in its pages under a different title. Maybe Desert Lure, also shot by Ozark Film Company in Galena, also with Van S. Trefon in the heavy lead, is there, too. Or maybe all of these things--all of the films and all of the facts behind them--are now lost.

A newspaper item from 1923 is more down to earth. It announced that Trefon and his wife were establishing an office in Galena for showing slide shows of comic moving pictures. This was to have been in outdoor venues in the city. Enumerated in the 1925 Kansas state census in Galena, Trefon called himself a film photographer. The couple had three young daughters at the time, a pair of twins aged four and a seven-month-old baby. Trefon's name showed up again in newspaper articles of the 1930s when he was a cameraman and independent film producer. Using the stage name Barbara Sharon, his youngest daughter was supposed to have been in the Our Gang comedies.

The Trefons were divorced on November 17, 1934. Nonetheless, Henrietta continued to use her husband's surname as her own. She lived in Culver City, California, as of April 1, 1935. In 1940, calling herself a freelance writer, she was lodging in Los Angeles with her daughters, Marjorie Derelys, aged fifteen, and Barbara Dolores, aged twelve. I don't know where her other two daughters, the twins Lorraine Erma and Maureen Mary, were at the time. If they weren't already married, they soon would be.

In 1945, Henrietta renounced any allegiance to a foreign country and was repatriated as an American citizen despite never having lived abroad. She may have been required to do this because of her marriage to a foreign national. She gave her occupation at the time as "free lance news and magazine feature writer."

In 1950, Henrietta was in Los Angeles and living with her daughter Lorraine Lawrence and Lorraine's two daughters. There had been some drama a few years before involving another of her daughters, Barbara McGlynn. At holiday time 1946, Barbara, separated from her husband and facing eviction from her tiny apartment, drank caustic poison. Fortunately for herself and her baby daughter, she only suffered a burned mouth. Unfortunately she was unable to avoid eviction.

Henrietta Prouty Trefon, aka Mary Sharon, died on December 21, 1962, in Los Angeles city or county, California. She was only a few days short of her sixty-seventh birthday. Tragedy struck a little more than a month later, on January 23, 1963, when her daughter, Barbara Dolores "Bobby" Trefon Eaton and Barbara's four-year-old son died in a house fire. Two of Henrietta's other daughters, Maureen and Marjorie, were blessed with very long lives. I don't know what happened to Lorraine, but I hope she enjoyed a long life, too.

Mary Sharon's Letter, Poem, & Stories in Weird Tales
Letter to "The Eyrie" (written from Galena, Kansas) (June 1923)
"The Ghost" (poem, Feb. 1924)
"The Door of Doom" (Feb. 1924)
"The Cat of Chiltern Castle" (Sept. 1926)

Further Reading

Many newspaper articles on her, her husband, and family from the 1920s through the 1940s.

Text copyright 2022, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Bert David Ross (1888-1947)

Pseudonym of Gilbert C. Ross
Aka G.C. Ross
Office Worker, Insurance Salesman, Gardener, Author, Teacher
Born March 8, 1888, Red Oak, Iowa
Died March 30, 1947, Santa Clara city or county, California

Bert David Ross was the pseudonym of Gilbert C. Ross, who also went by his initials as G.C. Ross. Ross was born on March 8, 1888, in Red Oak, Iowa. I haven't found anything on his early life, but on March 15, 1925, Ross married Della Rose Brown in Seattle, Washington. The couple had two daughters, Rose Alyce Ross and Star Aileen Ross.

As of 1928, Ross was working as office manager at Acme Engraving, Seattle, Washington. In 1930, he was an insurance salesman. Ten years later, he was a gardener for a private family in the Seattle area. In 1942, when he filled out his draft card, Ross was living at Deer Harbor on San Juan Island, Washington, and working for Davis Investment Co. Finally, in 1944, he was an office worker at Bremerton Navy Yard. It was at around this time that Ross' professional writing career began. He had a story called "Scandia Reef" in Short Stories, June 25, 1944. "Overflow," in Short Stories for October 25, 1944, is set on San Juan Island, Ross' former home.

On the strength of those successes and a couple of more from early 1945, Ross, with his associates, formed the Writer's Club of Bremerton in late April 1945. Ross served as the first president, while Edward Stevenson was vice-president, Mrs. Lucille E. Doty was secretary, and Alice Smock was treasurer. According to an article from September 25, 1945, other members of the Bremerton Writers Club and their guests included: Mildred Dunn, Eddie Hammond, Muriel Innes, Jane Kent, Mr. & Mrs. Harvey Leach, Bernice McFarland, Ivy Pelky, Louise Pelky, Seaman 1st Class Larry Richardson, and Dr. & Mrs. Savage. More articles give the names of more members during the 1940s through the 1960s: Clyde Clark, Henry Clarke, Valentine Dmetriev, Mr. & Mrs. Lynn Jensen, Muriel McConnell, Margaret Metcalfe, Marian Reid, Margaret Rice, and Myrtle Tennis.

As of 1946, Ross was a teacher of creative writing in night school classes conducted at Bremerton High School. His older daughter was in high school, the younger in grade school. Later in the year, Ross and his family moved either to San Luis Obispo or San Simeon, California. G.C. Ross died in Santa Clara city or county, California, on March 30, 1947, and so his writing career that had begun three years before came to a sudden end. He had just turned fifty-nine years old. 

If the information in The FictionMags Index is accurate (I always assume that it is), then Ross' career in writing for story magazines lasted just over three years, from June 1944 to November 1947. He had two stories in Weird Tales and eight in Short Stories. Both titles were owned at the time by Short Stories, Inc., of New York City, and both had Dorothy McIlwraith as their editor.

Bert David Ross' Stories in Weird Tales & Short Stories

• "Scandia Reef" in Short Stories (June 25, 1944)
• "Overflow" in Short Stories (Oct. 25, 1944)
• "Luck Plus X" in Short Stories (Feb. 25, 1945)
• "Old Black Magic" in Short Stories (May 10, 1945)
• "Plane Paradise" in Short Stories (Mar. 10, 1946)
• "'Discovery 2nd'" in Short Stories (Apr. 25, 1946)
• "Not Human" in Weird Tales (Sept. 1946)
• "Peek and the Blackfish" in Short Stories (Jan. 25, 1947)
• "Trip to Monterey" in Short Stories (Mar. 25, 1947)
• "The Last Adam and Eve" in Weird Tales (Nov. 1947)

Further Reading

• "Invite Membership in Writers Club" in Kitsap Sun (Washington), May 1, 1945, page 4.
• "Personal Portraits" by Vera Pumphrey in Kitsap Sun (Washington), March 2, 1946, page 3.

An illustration for "The Last Adam and Eve" by Bert David Ross, drawn by Boris Dolgov and published in Weird Tales, November 1947.

Text copyright 2022, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Minna Irving (1864-1940)

Aka Minnie Irving

Pseudonym of Minnie Odell
aka Mrs. Irving Hasbrouck De Lamater, Mrs. Harry Michener, Aurelia Maxwell Michener

Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Journalist, Author
Born May 17, 1864, Tarrytown, New York
Died July 23, 1940, Christian Sanitarium, Wyckoff, New Jersey

Known over the course of her long life and career as Minna Irving, poet and author Minnie Odell was born on May 17, 1864, in Tarrytown, New York. Her parents were William Roamer Odell (1840-?), a carpenter, and Mary Ann (Van Tassel) Odell (1842-1926), a near lifelong companion to her. Minnie started writing poems and songs at a young age. Counted in the 1880 census as "Minnie I. Odell," she gave her occupation, at age seventeen, as "authoress." The "Irving" part of her name seems to have been an invention, no doubt assumed for its association with a local luminary. After all, Tarrytown is and was famous as the home of Washington Irving (1783-1859), who died just five years before Minnie Odell was born. "Minna" was supposed to have been suggested by an editor at The Century close to the outset of her career. (1)

Now, none of that is to say that Minna Irving was not connected somehow to Washington Irving. Here is an excerpt from a feature article from 1962:

On March 20, 1800, [Joseph Cutler] purchased from Dr. Mordecai Hale the 165-acres John Van Tassel farm on the east side of Broadway in Tarrytown. On the property was kept prior to and during the Revolution as a tavern. It later became known as the Jacob Mott House. (2)

The house is gone now, but the surname Van Tassel will live on in that of Katrina Van Tassel, love interest of Washington Irving's hero Ichabod Crane. I can't be sure, but I believe that the previous owner of the Jacob Mott House was the same John Van Tassel (?-1813) who was also Minna Irving's maternal grandfather. So maybe if there was a connection, it was her on mother's side. One of Minna Irving's early works was "Folk Lore Tales of Sleepy Hollow," from 1885 or before.

The FictionMags Index has a long, long list of Minna Irving's credits. They begin with these four poems:

• "Bayard Taylor: in Memoriam" in Peterson’s Magazine (Feb. 1880)
• "Westminster Abbey" in Peterson’s Magazine (Sept. 1880)
• "Shakspere" in Scribner’s Monthly (Dec. 1880)
• "Dean Stanley: Obit 1881" Peterson’s Magazine (Jan. 1882) (3)

Her poem "The Haunted Heart," published in The Century in December 1885, became the title piece of a collection, Songs of a Haunted Heart (1888). Minna Irving had scores more poems, stories, and other pieces in Ainslee's Magazine, The Century, The Gray Goose, Lippincott's, Munsey's, New York Herald, Peterson's, The Smart Set, and other titles from 1882 to 1937.

Minna's last dated piece in The FictionMags Index was also her only poem in Weird Tales, "Sea-Wind," from August 1937. She contributed to other pulp magazines, too, including All-Story Love Stories, Argosy All-Story Weekly, Breezy Stories, and, oddly enough, Amazing Stories. Here are all of the poems and a story by Minna Irving listed in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb):

• "The Witches" (poem) (1890)
• "The Violet Immortal" (poem) in Putnam’s Monthly and The Critic (Oct. 1906)
• "The Spirit-Boats" (poem) in Argosy All-Story Weekly (Apr. 14, 1923); reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries (Dec. 1939) and Famous Fantastic Mysteries (Dec. 1951)
• "The Return" (poem) in The Haunted Hour, edited by Margaret Widdemer (Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920)
• "The Moon Woman" (short story) in Amazing Stories (Nov. 1929)
• "Sea-Wind" (poem) in Weird Tales (Aug. 1937)

A look at The FictionMags Index will show some other titles that sound like they could also be for genre works.

Under her married name, Mrs. Harry Michener or Aurelia Maxwell Michener, Minna had poems published in magazines of the Great American West:

• "The Cattleman's Choice" (poem) in Sunset: The Pacific Monthly (Aug. 1913)
• "At the Rancho Gonzales" (poem) in Overland Monthly (Feb. 1914)
•  "The Cameo" (poem) in Overland Monthly (June 1914)

Minna Irving was married and divorced twice. First came Irving Hasbrouck De Lamater (1870-1953), with whom she tied the knot on October 18, 1889, while he was on leave from West Point. October 18 was a Friday. While on a camping trip, the young couple were told by a Gypsy fortuneteller that to be married on a Friday is to bring bad luck, so they married again on July 5, 1890, in Peekskill, New York. The bad luck came anyway, so bad that after they separated, Minna bought a revolver to protect herself from De Lamater.

They divorced in 1911. Her second husband was Harry Heber Michener (1873-1949), a native Hoosier, later of California. He was a mine owner and race car driver and "generally conceded to be one of the most daring men of the country." (4) He would have to be if he was going to woo and wed Minna Irving, that "Sweet Singer of Sleepy Hollow," for she had been involved in scandals, lawsuits, and all kinds of tussles--though maybe mostly in her youth. Regarding one disagreement from 1894, editor M.D. Raymond of the Tarrytown Argus said in exasperation, "Don't mention the name of Minna Irving to me again." (5)

Minna Irving worked on the editorial staff of the New York Herald. In 1899, she received a gold medal for her poem on the sinking of the Maine. In 1923, the French government commissioned her to compose a poem to be engraved on a plaque on the grave of Quentin Roosevelt (1897-1918). She went on to write poems even into the last decade of her life. Minna Irving died on July 23, 1940, at Christian Sanitarium in Wyckoff, New Jersey.

Minna Irving's Poem in Weird Tales

"Sea-Wind" (Aug. 1937)

Further Reading

There are hundreds of newspaper articles on Minna Irving, including an obituary in the New York Times, dated July 7, 1940.

Notes

(1) See "On the War Path" in Yonkers Statesman (Yonkers, New York), December 1, 1885, page 3.

(2) From The Daily Times, Mamaroneck, New York, August 2, 1962, page 12.

(3) Dean Stanley was Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-1881).

(4) According to the Times-Democrat of New Orleans, in an article of January 17, 1909, page 27.

(5) "Minna Irving Upholds History" in the New York Sun, October 9, 1894, page 6.

Minna Irving (1864-1940), a photographic portrait from her book Songs of a Haunted Heart (1888). I have cropped this picture and have recolored it in order to tone down a moiré effect from a digital scan of the original. 

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

George Whitley aka A. Bertram Chandler (1912-1984)

Arthur Bertram Chandler
Aka Andrew Dunstan, S.H.M., George Whitely, George Whitley
Author, Poet, Essayist, Reviewer, Merchant Mariner
Born March 28, 1912, Aldershot, Hampshire, England
Died June 6, 1984, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

I thought I had covered most of the authors of the Golden Age of Science Fiction in previous articles, but then I find that the author called George Whitley was actually the well known Anglo-Australian author A. Bertram Chandler. I suppose I'll keep making these discoveries until I have written about all of the men and women who contributed to Weird Tales.

Arthur Bertram Chandler was born on March 28, 1912, in Aldershot, Hampshire, England. He served in the merchant marine in his native country and in Australia, to which he emigrated in 1956 after the breakup of his first marriage. According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, his earliest science fiction story was "'This Means War!'" in Astounding Science Fiction for May 1944. His first and only story for Weird Tales was "Castaway" from November 1947, published under the byline of George Whitley. Chandler was a very prolific author. Much of his fiction has to do with life aboard ship.

You can read about A. Bertram Chandler at various websites. Just one more fact before the facts of his death: Chandler's daughter Jenny is married to Ramsey Campbell, who has also contributed to Weird Tales.

A. Bertram Chandler died on June 6, 1984, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He was seventy-two years old.

George Whitley's Story in Weird Tales

"Castway" (Nov. 1947)

Further Reading

Besides Wikipedia, see the following sources (and embedded links found therein):

A. Bertram Chandler

AustLit

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Astounding Science Fiction, July 1946, the British edition with "Special Knowledge" by A. Bertram Chandler as the cover story. Cover art by William Timmins (1915-1985).

Cosmo #170, a complete science fiction novel (or, in the Italian, "i romanzi del fantascienza") by Chandler, from June 1965. The Italian title is Nelle Immense, Profondita Spaziall, in English, The Deep Reaches of Space. Cover art by Luigi Garonzi.

Text copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Binny Koras, "The Gypsy Poet" (ca. 1895-?)

Pseudonym of Alexander Rice
Psychiatric Nurse, Journalist, Teacher, YMCA Director, Public Speaker, Artist, Poet, Translator, Occultist
Born ca. 1895
Died ?

Updated on November 13, 2018

Binny Koras, known as "the Gypsy poet," was the pseudonym of a man named Alexander Rice. Rice was born in about 1895. According to a newspaper article from 1922: 

[He] grew up on the highways and byways of middle America, lived in Australia for several years, served during the war as a psychiatric nurse and since returning to the United States in 1919 has been engaged in newspaper writing, teaching and work with boys. A student of oriental languages, he has translated verses from the Japanese, Arabic, and Urdu. (1)

Alexander Rice was managing editor of the Davenport (Iowa) Tribune and a boys' secretary and director of the YMCA in Davenport. He also taught vocational school for ex-servicemen after the war. In 1922, he got a job with Neuhaus and Son of St. Louis to take paintings by important American artists on the road for exhibition. Rice, who was an artist himself, would also give lectures on these paintings.

As Binny Koras, Rice had poems in Dial, Nation, Pagan, Pearson's, Shadowland, and Survey. His poem "Growing Up," originally in the Rock Island Argus (Illinois) and reprinted in The Literary Digest, The Bookman, and Anthology of Newspaper Verse for 1921, was called by the same article "perhaps the most widely printed verse of 1921." He had one poem in Weird Tales, "For Clytie," in the issue for November 1926.

Oddly enough, Koras was also an occultist and was listed in Who's Who in Occultism, New Thought, Psychism and Spiritualism, compiled and edited by William C. Hartmann, and published in 1927 by The Occult Press of Jamaica, New York. Here is the entry on Koras in its entirety:

SEVENTAN FELLOWSHIP. Based on the Book of Seveta (Arabic, Seventh Century, A.D.). Missionary for North America, Binny Koras, A.M., Ph.D.

He was evidently involved in socialist causes, too, which are, as we now know, just another form of superstition or occult activity.

Binny Koras submitted his verse to newspapers from addresses in Davenport, Iowa; Mattoon, Illinois; and St. Paul, Minnesota. His nickname, "the Gypsy poet," may have come from his wandering ways, but he also claimed Romany ancestry. Unfortunately I have not been able to find out anything more on Alexander Rice or Binny Koras, including his dates and places of birth and death.

Binny Koras' Poem in Weird Tales
"For Clytie" (Nov. 1926)

Further Reading

• "Alexander Rice Gains Fame for Writing a Poem." The Daily Times (Davenport, IA), Oct. 8, 1921, p. 4.
• "'Jedediah Tingle' and an Iowa Pet" by Agnes Barton. Des Moines (IA) Register, May 14, 1922, p. 31.
• [Item.] The Dispatch (Moline, IL), July 22, 1922, p. 4.
• "Alexander Rice in Charge of Art Exhibit on Tour." The Daily Times (Davenport, IA), Aug. 16, 1922, p. 7.

Note

(1) "'Jedediah Tingle' and an Iowa Pet" by Agnes Barton. Des Moines (IA) Register, May 14, 1922, p. 31.

Here are some poems by Binny Koras, perhaps his complete poems extant:

Growing Up
by Binny Koras (1921)

Gee! But I wanted to grow up.
I wanted to put on longies 
And smoke cigars, 
And be a man 
With a pay-day on Saturday. 
I wanted to grow up 
And have somebody to buy sodas for,
And take to the circus 
Once in a while. 

We all did, then: 
Pat, who could throw any kid in town, 
And Don, who went to the Advent church. 
And said the world was coming to an end 
In Nineteen-hundred, 
And Brick Top and Eppie and Skin and Spider.

We all wanted to grow up 
And become pirates and millionaires and 
Soldiers and Presidents and 
Owners of candy stores. 
And all the time we were eating home-cooking 
And wearing holes in our pants, 
And talking Hog-Latin 
And doing what two fingers in the air 
Stood for;
And saving stamps. 
And making things we read about 
In The Boys' World. 
Do you know how to play mumble-de-peg, 
And skim rocks, 
And tread water, 
And skin the cat? 
Do you know what a stick on the shoulder stands for 
And what "Commggery, wiggery, meggery" means? 

Skin is running a wheat farm, now,
Up in North Dakota. 
Pat is on the road 
Selling something or other. 
Brick Top never grew up, quite, 
And was making darts for a kid of his own 
When I saw him last. 
And Spider is yelling his head off 
About Socialism and the class struggle 
On street corners. 

Don was with the Rainbow Division when the world ended. 

Yesterday I heard a little freckle-face 
Whistle through his fingers 
And tell a feller called Curley 
What he was going to do when he grew up. 

* * *

"Smoke" from 1922, "Evolution" from 1927, and "To One Departed" from 1922.

Original text 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Flavia Richardson (1897-1985)

Pseudonym of Christine Campbell Thomson
Aka Christine Hartley
Author, Editor, Anthologist, Literary Agent, Occultist
Born May 31, 1897, London, England
Died September 29, 1985

Christine Campbell Thomson was the editor of eleven collections of weird tales and the author of at least eleven weird tales of her own. She was married more than once, but her name at birth seems to have been Christine Mary Campbell Thomson. (Her husbands were named Cook and Hartley.) If Christine Mary Campbell Thomson was indeed the later editor of weird tales, then she was the daughter of Herbert Campbell Thomson and Constance Emily Temple Thomson, and she was born in Marylebone in London. In 1911, that same girl lived with her family at 34 Queen Anne Street, not far from Sherlock Holmes' residence at 221B Baker Street, also in Marylebone.

Christine Mary Campbell Thomson was born on May 31, 1897, in London. She was educated at Queen's College and by age thirty was a published author and the editor of a series called Not at Night, named after the first volume in the series, from 1925. There were eleven books in the Not at Night series, plus an omnibus edition (published in 1937), an American edition (1928), and four (or six) reprint editions from many years later. The lists that follow are from The Speculative Fiction Database. Any transcription errors are my own.

Not at Night Series

• Not at Night (1925)
• More Not at Night (1926)
• You'll Need a Nightlight (1927)
• Gruesome Cargoes (1928)
• By Daylight Only (1929)
• Switch on the Light (1931)
• At Dead of Night (1931)
• Grim Death (1932)
• Keep on the Light (1933)
• Terror by Night (1934)
• Nightmare By Daylight (1936)
• Not at Night Omnibus (1937)

In 1928, Macy-Macius of New York reprinted some of the stories from those British editions for American readers. The title was Not at Night: Creepy Tales!, and the editor was Herbert Asbury. In the 1960s, of course, there was a wave of nostalgia for fantasy and horror of the pulp-fiction era (as well as for Universal monsters and other movies from the same era). Arrow Books, a British publishing house, brought back the Not at Night series in its own series of paperback editions, two of which were reprinted with different titles:

Not at Night Arrow Books Reprints

• Not at Night (1960)
• More Not at Night (1961; reprinted as Never at Night, 1972)
• Still Not at Night (1962; reprinted as Only By Daylight, 1972)
• Terror by Night (1976)

The odd thing about all this is that the stories from the series were drawn for the most part from an American magazine, none other than Weird Tales. Mike Ashley is a historian of science fiction. By his count, there were 170 stories in the Not at Night series, of which 100 (or 59 percent) came from Weird Tales. So in the 1960s, readers could catch up on reprints from a British series from the 1920s and '30s, which were in turn reprints from an American magazine of that same period, and at least one of which, "Out of the Earth" by Christine Campbell Thomson (writing under a pseudonym), was originally in a British magazine. You'll understand why I'm not going to catalogue the stories from the Not at Night series.

If a sketchy website is a reliable source of information, then Christine Campbell Thomson registered her firm, Campbell Thomson and McLaughlin Limited, on March 19, 1932, with offices in Arsenal, London--if I interpret the thing correctly. Campbell Thomson and McLaughlin was a literary agency and its founder a literary agent. The firm was subsumed by The Marsh Agency Limited, also of London, a firm still in existence.

Even before she established her own firm, Christine worked as a literary agent. Among her clients was Richard Martin Oscar Cook (1888-1952), who went by the truncated name of Oscar Cook. Just back from Borneo in the early 1920s, he went to Christine Campbell Thomson for help with his memoir of the Orient. She retitled it and the book was published as Borneo: The Stealer of Hearts in  August 1924. On the last day of the following month, she and Cook were married. It was his firm (he was a part owner, I think), Selwyn & Blount Limited, that published the books in the Not at Night series, as well as Christine's novel, His Excellency (1927). She also wrote the novels The Incredible Island (1924), Port of Call: Love and Murder in Algeria (1936), Hawk of the Sahara (1939), and In a Far Corner. And she contributed to the Daily Herald, Evening News, Glasgow Herald, Newcastle Sunday Sun, Star, and other papers. You can find out more about the writing couple on Douglas A. Anderson's blog, Lesser-Known Writers, here. There you will read that Oscar Cook and Christine Campbell Thomson had one child, a son named Gervis Hugh Frere Cook (later Frere-Cook), born on July 12, 1928. He was also a writer, but his career was cut short with his death late in 1974.

Oscar Cook and his wife were divorced in 1937 or 1938. He died on February 23, 1952, in London. In 1945, she married a man name Hartley, and that was her surname at her death in 1985. So, there is a lot about names in the story of Christine Campbell Thomson. Here's another: Flavia Richardson. That was her nom de plume, and the one she used for all but the last of the following short stories:

Short Stories

• "Out of the Earth" in Hutchinson's Mystery Story Magazine (Jan. 1925; reprinted in Weird Tales, Apr. 1925)
• "When Hell Laughed" in Hutchinson's Mystery Story Magazine (Jan. 1926; reprinted in Gruesome Cargoes, 1928; You'll Need a Nightlight, 1927; More Not at Night, 1961; et al.)
• "At Number Eleven" in By Daylight Only (1929)
• "The Gray Lady" in Weird Tales (Oct. 1929)
• "Pussy" in At Dead of Night (1931; reprinted in Not At Night, 1960)
• "The Red Turret" in Switch on the Light (1931; reprinted in A Century of Creepy Stories, 1934; et al.)
• "Behind the Blinds" in Grim Death (1932; reprinted Still Not at Night, 1962; Only By Daylight, 1972)
• "The Black Hare" in Keep on the Light (1933; reprinted in Not at Night Omnibus, 1937)
• "Behind the Yellow Door" in Terror by Night (1934, reprinted in Not at Night Omnibus, 1937; et al.)
• "Empty Stockings" in Nightmare By Daylight (1936)
• "Message for Margie" in The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories (1964; et al.)

As mentioned, Christine was also a novelist, and she wrote non-fiction, including:

• The Right Way to Write Successful Fiction (to which she may have been only a contributor)
• Murder and Sudden Death with John C. Woodiwiss (1939)
• I Am A Literary Agent (1951)
• The Western Mystery Tradition: The Esoteric Heritage of the West (1968)
• A Case For Reincarnation (1972) 

Finally, Christine Campbell Thomson Cook Hartley was an occultist, a friend of Dion Fortune (1890-1946), and a member of the Society of the Inner Light. She died on September 29, 1985, at age eighty-eight.

Flavia Richardson's Stories in Weird Tales

"Out of the Earth" (Apr. 1927; previously in Hutchinson's Mystery Story Magazine, Jan. 1925)

"The Gray Lady" (Oct. 1929)

Further Reading
You can read about Christine Campbell Thomson and her husband Oscar Cook on Douglas A. Anderson's blog, Lesser-Known Writers, here, and on the website Vault of Evil: Brit Horror Pulp Plus!, here. Otherwise, the pickings seem to be pretty slim for such a significant figure in the history of weird fiction in Great Britain.

Text copyright 2016, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

G.G. Pendarves (1885-1938)

Née Gladys Gordon Trenery
Aka Marjory E. Lambe (See the comment below.)
Author, Pianist, Music Teacher
Born January 1885, Stonycroft, Liverpool, Merseyside; or Cornwall, or West Derby, Lancashire, England
Died August 1, 1938, Sunset House, Parkgate, Cheshire, England

Five years ago, I wrote an entry called "Women Writers in Weird Tales" in which I gave some figures from Eric Leif Davin's book Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965 (2006). Among those figures is a list of the most prolific women writers of fiction in the pages of Weird Tales. Third on that list, after Allison V. Harding and Mary Elizabeth Counselman, is G.G. Pendarves. I believe that Allison V. Harding was actually a man, actually the associate editor of Weird Tales, Lamont Buchanan. If that's true, then G.G. Pendarves had the second-most stories in Weird Tales among women. And yet very little to nothing is known of her. [Update: That has changed, and so I have updated what I have written about G.G. Pendarves. My update is dated January 26, 2025. I have stricken some of what I wrote before and have removed a few other things completely.]

G.G. Pendarves was the nom de plume of Gladys Gordon Trenery. I hesitate to call it a pseudonym as it could easily have been her married name. No one seems to know. She was called a spinster in a public record of her will. If that was true about her, then Pendarves was not her married name. It is however a Cornish surname, also a place name in Cornwall. I believe the place name came first, and so the Pendarves were the people of that place. Gladys Trenery's use of the Pendarves surname may have been to tie her to a place that meant something in her life and in the lives of her family.

Gladys Trenery was the daughter of Captain John Trenery (1844-1916), a master mariner, and Elizabeth E. Blaney Phillips Trenery (1848-1927). Captain Trenery was, according to his obituary, "a prominent figure in shipping circles." (The Cornishman, Apr. 20, 1916) Among his other accomplishments and activities, he was a commodore of the fleet for the Johnstone Line. He wasn't very often counted in censuses with his family. Maybe he was at sea when the census taker came around. Captain Trenery died at home in New Brighton, in Merseyside, in April 1916.

According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, Gladys Gordon Trenery was born in Cornwall. An index of births in England and Wales gives a Gladys Gordon Trenery as having been born in Lancashire in January 1885. The 1901 Census has her living in Birkenhead, Cheshire, with a birthplace in Stonycroft, Liverpool. Later records also show a birthplace of Stonycroft. Gladys Gordon Trenery was sixteen years old in 1901 and at the time living in a large household that included Grace H. Trenery, age fifty-five, and Elizabeth B. Trenery, age fifty-three. We now know that Elizabeth B. Trenery was her mother and Grace her aunt. There were Trenerys in Cornwall to be sure. Maybe that was where the family originated before moving to Merseyside or its adjoining counties. It seems safe to assume that either Grace H. or Elizabeth B. Trenery was her mother.

Gladys Trennery had two older brothers, Walter J.P. Trennery and David N. Trennery, who emigrated to New Zealand, worked in insurance, and had a keen interest in art. His avocation was painting. Her younger sister was Grace Robartes Trenery (1886-1950). Grace R. Trenery graduated from the University of Liverpool in 1913 with a masters degree in arts. She lectured in literature at the university for many years before being appointed warden of women students at the University College of North Wales in 1943. She also edited the Arden annotated edition of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, published in April 1924, 360 years to the month after the great playwright's birth.

Gladys Gordon Trenery attended Wallasey High School in Merseyside. At Christmastime 1907, she passed her examination to become a teacher in the playing of pianoforte, this at the Royal Academy of Music. She would then have been just short of her twenty-third birthday. Writing as G.G. Pendarves, she had her first known published story, "The Kabbalist," in Hutchinson's Mystery Story Magazine in November 1923. Eight more followed in that magazine over the next two years. She broke into the pages of Weird Tales magazine in August 1926 with "The Devil's Graveyard."

G.G. Pendarves contributed "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow" to The Horn Book for November 1931. Otherwise, all of her known stories in the period 1926 to 1939 were in Argosy All-Story Magazine, The Magic Carpet Magazine, Oriental Stories, and Weird Tales. Her last three stories in "The Unique Magazine" were published posthumously, for Gladys G. Trenery died on August 1, 1938. That sad event is lost among the deaths of Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft during the previous two years.

Gladys traveled to the United States in April 1927, April 1930, and November 1932. At least two of those visits were with her cousin, Christine (Bickle) Banbury, or Mrs. Fernley H. Banbury, who lived in Connecticut. Fernley Hope Banbury (1881-1963) was an engineer and inventor. He graduated from Purdue University in 1906 and worked for the Farrell Corporation in Ansonia, Connecticut. When Gladys Trenery traveled in November 1932, she gave an address of 15 Linnet Lane in Liverpool, a fitting name for a musician, for a linnet is a songbird of Britain and Europe. If her house was the same house with that address today, then I find it a charming brick house set away from the street.

Gladys Gordon Trennery died on August 1, 1938, at Sunset House, Parkgate, Cheshire, England. She was buried two days later at Rake Lane Cemetery in Wallasey, Merseyside. Incredibly, author Ramsey Campbell, who was born in Liverpool on January 4, 1946, had a neighbor named Gladys Trenery. She looked after him when his mother was taken to the hospital after cutting her hand on broken glass. You can read about that event in "An Interview with Ramsey Campbell" from July 23, 2013, here. That makes me wonder whether the death date of G.G. Pendarves is correct or if the name Galdys Trenery was really common enough for it to have been given to one teller of weird tales and to the babysitter of another. Update: As it turns out, her death date is correct. See the note, marked with an asterisk *, below.

G.G. Pendarves' Stories in Oriental Stories, The Magic Carpet Magazine, and Weird Tales (plus one from Argosy All-Story Magazine)
Note: All are from Weird Tales unless otherwise noted.
"The Devil's Graveyard" (Aug. 1926)
"The Return" (Apr. 1927)
"The Power of the Dog" (Aug. 1927)
"The Lord of the Tarn" (Nov. 1927)
"The Eighth Green Man" (Mar. 1928; reprinted Jan. 1937 and May 1952)
"The Ruler of Zem-Zem" in Argosy All-Story Weekly (Apr. 28, 1928)
"The Doomed Treveans" (May 1928)
"The Laughing Thing" (May 1929)
"The Grave at Goonhilly" (Oct. 1930; reprinted Mar. 1954)
"The Footprint" (May 1930)
"The Black Camel" in Oriental Stories (Oct./Nov. 1930)
"The Veiled Leopard" in Oriental Stories (Dec. 1930/Jan. 1931)
"The Secret Trail" in Oriental Stories (Feb./Mar. 1931)
"Thirty Pieces of Silver" in Oriental Stories (Summer 1931)
"El Hamel, the Lost One" in Oriental Stories (Winter 1932)
"From the Dark Halls of Hell" (Jan. 1932)
"The Djinnee of El Sheyb" in Oriental Stories (Spring 1932)
"The Altar of Melek Taos" (Sept. 1932)
"Abd Dhulma, Lord of Fire (Dec. 1933)
"Passport to the Desert" in The Magic Carpet Magazine (Jan. 1934)
"Werewolf of the Sahara" (Aug./Sept. 1936)
"The Dark Star" (Mar. 1937)
"The Whistling Corpse" (July 1937)
"Thing of Darkness" (Aug. 1937; reprinted Nov. 1953)
"The Black Monk" (Oct. 1938)
"The Sin-Eater" (Dec. 1938; reprinted Sept. 1952 and July 1954)
"The Withered Heart (Nov. 1939)

Further Reading

Look for reprints of G.G. Pendarves' stories in various anthologies and reprint editions, including in The Eighth Green Man (and Other Strange Folk) (1989). The title story was one of only five stories reprinted twice in Weird Tales. "The Sin-Eater," also by G.G Pendarves, was another.

*Revision (Oct. 17, 2017): The death date for Gladys Gordon Trenery as given here is in fact correct. I have from R. Alain Everts a document that confirms it. Thanks to RAE.

Updated on January 26, 2025.

Thanks also to The FictionMags Index and to commenters below.

Text copyright 2016, 2023, 2025 Terence E. Hanley