Susan Andrews Rice (1865-1938)

Author, Poet, Teacher of Music & Voice
Born September 1865, New York State, possibly in Croghan
Died October 5, 1938, at home, Washington, D.C.

Susan Andrews Rice was born in September 1865, possibly in Croghan, New York. Some sources give her birth year as 1866, but the U.S. census of 1870 indicates 1865 as the actual year. Her parents were Yale Rice, a farmer, and Helen Marie (Curtis) Rice. She had three sisters and a brother. The family moved from New York State to Falls Church, Virginia, in the 1870s or '80s.

Susan A. Rice studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she was a pupil of Lyman Wheeler (1837-1900). She taught vocal culture in Washington, D.C., and wrote articles on music. She was also the author of poems and short stories. Her credits include:

• "Music in America," article in The National Tribune (Washington, D.C.) (June 9, 1892)
• "To Write or Not to Write," article in The Writer (1892)
• "How to Entertain," article (syndicated) (1893)
• "All Saints Day," poem in the Boston Evening Transcript (Jan. 2, 1896)
• "Patty Jasper's Idea," short story (syndicated, including in The Independent [New York, New York]) (Aug. 20, 1896) 
• "A Missionary Story," short story in the New Orleans Times-Democrat (ca. Nov. 1897)
• "The One Who Knows Me Not," poem in the Boston Evening Transcript (Feb. 13, 1901)
• "His Particular Detestation," short story in the New Orleans Times-Democrat (Nov. 3, 1901)
• "Delia Duty's Defection," short story in the New Orleans Times-Democrat (Oct. 22, 1911)
• "The Girl in the Wheeling-Chair," short story in Harper’s Bazaar (June 1913)
• Letter in All-Story Weekly (July 27, 1918)
• "The Ghost Farm," short story in Weird Tales (May 1925)
• "A Day in the Life of Aurelia Durant," short story (syndicated) (Oct. 1925)

Thanks to The FictionMags Index for some of these credits.

Her story for Weird Tales, entitled "The Ghost Farm," is short but good, I think, and memorable. I like the tone and the sentiment. It's an example of why weird fiction should come also from women and from writers outside the realms of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. It was reprinted in 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories (1993), even if it isn't ghastly at all. "The Ghost Farm" has as its background the many losses of the Great War. That was an unavoidable theme and subject of many stories and poems in Weird Tales during the 1920s.

Susan Andrews Rice died at home in Washington, D.C., on October 5, 1938, at age seventy-three. She was buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Falls Church, Virginia, where her family had lived for many years.

Copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Robert G. Bowie (1880-1959)

Author, Schoolteacher, Government Worker, Railroad Worker
Born November 2, 1880, Goresville, Loudoun County, Virginia
Died September 20, 1959, Washington, D.C.

Like Robinson H. Harsh, Robert G. Bowie was a railroad worker and an employee of the Interstate Commerce Commission. In 1918, when both men filled out their draft cards, both were employed by that agency, both to do with railroads, and both were based in the Karper Building (or Harper Building?) in Chicago. Both men also lived and worked in Washington, D.C., later in life. It seems like I have the right two men. Their shared story in Weird Tales, entitled "Crossed Lines" (Feb. 1925), takes place partly on a train and in the Chicago area.

Robert Gilmer or Gilmor Bowie was born on November 2, 1880, in Goresville, Loudoun County, Virginia, a place that no longer shows on the map but is located south of Lucketts. He was the grandson of Dr. Nelson Gray West (1832-1915), a prominent physician and a surgeon in the Confederate army. His parents were John N. Bowie and Mary Lloyd (West) Bowie. As a young man, Bowie was a schoolteacher in Mount Gilead, in his native county. On January 6, 1916, he married Harriet Emily Winkler (1892-1988) in Chicago. Like his presumed co-author, Bowie lived and worked in Chicago and Washington, D.C. I believe he retired from the railroad, even if he had worked at one time for the Interstate Commerce Commission. Bowie died on September 20, 1959, in the nation's capital and was buried at Union Cemetery, in Leesburg, in the county of his birth.

Robert G. Bowie's Story in Weird Tales
"Crossed Lines" with Robinson H. Harsh (Feb. 1925)

Further Reading
None known.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Robinson H. Harsh (1894-1968)

Aka Harold Harsh

Author, Inventor, Genealogist, Philatelist, Government Worker, Railroad Worker, Salesman, Newsboy

Born October 9, 1894, Dayton, Texas

Died October 9, 1968, Leonardtown, Maryland

Authors Robinson H. Harsh and Robert G. Bowie collaborated on a story called "Crossed Lines," published in Weird Tales in February 1925. It is the only work for either one of these men listed in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Bowie has one other work, an article called "Columbus, Ohio," published in National Magazine in August 1903, listed in The FictionMags Index. I can't be absolutely sure that either one of the men I will write about is the co-author of this story, but there are things between them that match up pretty well, and so I'll go with them for now.

Robinson Harold Harsh, Jr., was born on October 9, 1894, in Dayton, Texas. His father, Robinson H. Harsh, Sr., was a grain dealer, while his mother, Mary E. Harsh, was  a housewife. In 1900, the Harsh family was in Canadian, Oklahoma. In 1910 and 1920, they were in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Young Harsh was a newsboy for the Hot Springs New Era newspaper in 1913. In 1918, Harsh worked for the Interstate Commerce Commission, and in 1920 as a salesman. By 1930, he was living on his own in Washington, D.C., and working as a civil engineer on a railroad. That same year, he married Leslie Malcolm Miller (1897-1984) in West Virginia. In 1940, 1942, and 1950, Harsh, his wife, and their two daughters lived in the nation's capital, where he worked for the Internal Revenue Service. These are some of the things that public records and newspaper items tell us. There's another newspaper item that places Harsh in Chicago. This one is from the Brooklyn Eagle, November 16, 1919, and it tells about Harsh and his invention of a "glad-hand" door handle. Clad in a cuff and coat sleeve, Harsh's open-handed handle reached out to welcome store customers. Shaking the hand opened the door. I can't imagine why these never caught on.

Robinson H. Harsh collaborated with Robert G. Bowie on the story "Crossed Lines." Their story can be categorized as a switched-body or body-swap kind of story, like Freaky Friday (1976) or the Star Trek episode "Turnabout Intruder" (1969). There is also a mad-doctor angle and, not surprisingly, a Charles Fort kind-of angle. The mad doctor is Dr. Theophilus Cameroon. We're led to believe that he is the one responsible for switching the bodies of the Mutt-and-Jeff pair of men who are the main characters in "Crossed Lines." There is a framing device or tale-within-a-tale aspect of the story, too. The two men who hear the tale of the body-swap return to the apartment of one of them. This man has "a vast collection of newspaper and magazine clippings," à la Charles Fort. It is by reading these clippings that they figure out what Dr. Cameroon was up to in his experiments. So, like so many weird tales, a look at documentary evidence--letters, diaries, newspaper clippings, and so on--usually found at or near the end of the story, reveals the secret or solves the mystery. By the way, "Crossed Lines" is set in the Chicago area. And the telling of the tale-within-a-tale takes place on a train.

"Crossed Lines" has a heavy, stuffy, and old-fashioned style. It reads like newspaper stories of the late 1800s and early 1900s. There is some light content, despite the predicament of the teller of the tale. A generation or two later, a concept like this one would have been handled more deftly, using lighter and more nimble prose, also with more dialogue and less narration. But we had to start somewhere in our telling and reading of weird tales.

In the next entry, I'll write about Robert G. Bowie, and I'll try to make a connection between the two candidates I have as authors of "Crossed Lines." It's appropriate that two men would collaborate on a story in which two men swap bodies. As for Robinson H. Harsh, he died on his seventy-fourth birthday, on October 9, 1968, in Leonardtown, Maryland, and was buried at Joy Chapel Cemetery in nearby Hollywood.

Robinson H. Harsh's Story in Weird Tales
"Crossed Lines" with Robert G. Bowie (Feb. 1925)

Further Reading
See an obituary and photograph of Harsh on the website Find A Grave, here. The obituary includes some facts on Harsh's careers as a genealogist of the Harsh family and as a philatelist.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Reactions to "Teoquitla the Golden" by Ramòn de las Cuevas

"Teoquitla the Golden" by Ramòn de las Cuevas (Mark R. Harrington) was the cover story for the November 1924 issue of Weird Tales. The issue of January 1925 was the first in which readers had a chance to respond to that issue and its stories. Before printing their responses in the revived letters column, called "The Eyrie," the new editor, Farnsworth Wright, provided some answers to his question about what kind of stories Weird Tales should print. Should they be horror stories or something else? The readers would have their say.

Reader W.S. Charles of Pendleton, Oregon, wrote: "I herewith put in my oar against 'horror stories,' particularly that class that are somber and in the main vicious, beyond the realm of reason." By "beyond the realm of reason," I think he meant "unreasonably" or "extremely." Too bad W.S. Charles and people like him (or her) are not around today to make their demands. I think we would have better and more enjoyable stories, as well as a higher level of art and accomplishment in weird fiction, if they were. Instead we have writers indulging in their sickness for the sake of themselves, their sick friends, and their sick readers.

Farnsworth Wright took the measure of the readers in 1924-1925, responding:

Well, readers, we are going to keep the magazine weird, but NOT disgusting. The votes for the necrophilic tales were so few that we are satisfied you want us to keep the magazine clean. Stories of the [Edgar Allan] Poe type -- scary stories -- spooky stories -- mystic and occult fiction -- thrilling mysteries -- bizarre crime stories -- all these will find place in Weird Tales, but those of you who want tales of blood-drinking and cannibalism will have to make your opinion register a great deal more strongly than you have yet done before we let down the bars to this type of stories [sic]. We repeat here what we have said before: Weird Tales belongs to you, the readers, and we will be guided by your wishes.

That last part bears repeating (and condensing):

Weird Tales belongs to the readers.

Authors, editors, publishers, and critics of today would never allow that, though. Never. For to allow Weird Tales and weird fiction in general to belong to the readers would make of all of this a democratic instead of an elitist thing. They would have to give up control and open up their clique. And as we have seen in election after election, democracy is intolerable to self-anointed elites, for if the people are allowed their say, they will inevitably choose things the elites must hate.

* * *

Also in November 1924, Farnsworth Wright instituted a voting process among readers for their favorite stories in every issue. The first winner was "The Brain in the Jar" by Norman Elwood Hammerstrom (Hamerstrom). Second place went to "Teoquitla the Golden." In the issue of January 1925, Lieutenant Arthur J. Burks wrote to say: "Ramón de las Cuevas is a writing hombre." (Sometimes the accent mark went one way and sometimes the other.) I like that compliment. Having served in the Caribbean, Burks recognized the meaning behind the pseudonym, continuing: "Also keep 'Ramón of the Caves' busy--he knows his stuff! His description of the old beggar woman took me bodily back to the West Indies. In any case my vote for the best story goes to him." In the March 1925 issue, Cecil Fuller of Tulare, California, asked for a second story by Ramón de las Cuevas. Alas, this was not to be.

In its May issue of 1925, Weird Tales observed (obliquely) its second anniversary. Among the letters in "The Eyrie" was one from an anonymous correspondent in Moscow, Idaho, in which he criticized what he termed "impossibilities":

"Just one instance: Teoquitla the Golden was very clever and entertaining, but the permutation of sex described is a biological impossibility. Let me qualify that. Sex has apparently been changed experimentally in certain lower animals; varying degrees of change from female to male are known to take place in cattle (the freemartin phenomenon), and possibly may also occur in other mammals. But the important point is this: such changes can only take place during the embryonic stage of development. After that, they are impossible. Any biologist will tell you that. Of course, fiction of the weird sort is not intended to stick to scientific facts, although realism in any story will be enhanced if the scientific basis is properly regarded. Still, Teoquitla the Golden was clever."

What was true at the beginning of time was also true in 1924 and is still true today: sex in human beings cannot be changed from one to the other. (Yes, there are only two.) A man cannot be a woman and a woman cannot be a man. There are those of us who like to think of history as being a positive progression and people of the past as being primitive, while we are naturally more advanced. But at least in 1924, someone in small-town Idaho knew and wrote the truth. He could have been a grade school dropout, a factory worker, farmhand, or common laborer, and he would still have been smarter and more sensible than so many people of today, including politicians, pundits, commentators, physicians, surgeons, teachers, librarians, college professors and administrators, journalists, authors, artists, and people in entertainment, sports, and the media. The worst of them are vicious, hateful, violent, aggressive, destructive. They wish to carry out--and do--the kind of necrophilic and cannibalistic horrors that readers in 1924 objected to. Worse yet, they wish to do these things to children. And the best of them? Dupes--people too weak in will and in the mind to think for themselves or to stand up for the truth. They are people who have fallen for lies, believe lies, and tell lies, even if it means women and children are harmed in the process. And they're always so sure they're smarter and better than those of us who speak and act on the truth. They are always so sure they're morally and intellectually superior to us. Shame on them all. If there are forces in history, surely the most powerful of these is divine in its origins. This force is expressed directly through truth, fact, unalterable reality, and immutable law, and their most horrible ideas will surely fall before it.

* * *

One thing the anonymous letter-writer here might have missed by a little is that weird fiction need not be scientific, for weird fiction is the fiction of weird. Science fiction is the fiction of science. In reading weird fiction, we seek a departure from strict realism and into weird realms. The whole point in "Teoquitla the Golden" is that it's a story in which Weird has her way. A man who was a hater of a woman meets his weird in being transformed into and living as a woman.

In looking for a candidate writer of that letter in Weird Tales regarding Teoquitla and science, I have come upon Dr. Carl DeWitt Garby (1890 or 1892-1928), lifelong friend of then unpublished but soon-to-be renowned science fiction author E.E. "Doc" Smith (1890-1965). Smith and Garby were roommates at the University of Idaho in Moscow. Both graduated in 1914. Like Smith, Garby was a fan of science fiction. Garby's wife, Lee Hawkins Garby (1890-1957), was, too. She collaborated with Doc Smith on his famed serial, then novel, The Skylark of Space (1928). All three lived and worked in Washington, D.C. Poor Dr. Garby died while quite young, presumably in that city. I can't say that Dr. Garby was the author of that letter to "The Eyrie"--I don't know about the timeline exactly. Could he have been in Moscow in 1924? Or could his friend Doc Smith have been the writer? The world, I guess, will never know.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales: The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary-Part Three

Seabury Quinn had the second essay in "The Eyrie" in March 1948. His is quite a bit longer than August Derleth's. His, too, includes a list, but Quinn's is longer, and I sense a kindlier inclusivity in it. He even used the word inclusion in his essay, albeit in a different context. Quinn's essay is in the same spirit, I think, as early observances of anniversaries in Weird Tales. That's fitting, I think. And I think his essay is better than that written by Derleth, who preceded him.

Weird Tales, A Retrospect--Quinn

The vast majority of people will tell you, "I don’t like ghost stories," meaning, thereby, "I am afraid of them." A relatively small minority of cultured and imaginative readers either find a sort of masochistic thrill in having the daylights scared out of them or, completely agnostic, still get a lift from reading stories of "ghoulies and ghosties, long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night." It is for this select, sophisticated minority WEIRD TALES is published, and that it has fulfilled its purpose is more than merely adequately proved by the fact that it celebrates its Silver Anniversary this issue.

Until the advent of WEIRD TALES the longest-lived magazine dedicated to the supernatural story was the Black Cat which first saw the light of print October, 1895, and perished in September, 1906, after eleven years of superservice to discerning readers on both sides of the Atlantic. True, it had a temporary recrudescence between December, 1919, and October, 1920, but in that little interval it functioned only as a zombie, without life or spirit.

The publication of WEIRD TALES filled a real want. Thrill-seekers, votaries of the ghost story, people fed up with the boy-meets-girl formula or the adventures of impossible detectives flocked to it as the thirsty flocked to wet-goods emporia at the recision of the Volstead Act, and writers who had turned out one or more good stories of the supernatural and found no market for them sent in their cherished brain-children with a sigh of profound thankfulness.

The list of names which has appeared on WEIRD TALES contents pages reads like a roster of those already great or destined to greatness in this particular genre: H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, E. Hoffman Price, Frank Belknap Long, H.G. Wells, Sax Rohmer, Major George Fielding Elliot, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Carl Jacobi, A.V. Harding, Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, Frank Owen, Clark Ashton Smith, Manly Wade Wellman, Henry E. Whitehead [sic], Earl Pierce [sic], Greye LaSpina, Edmund Hamilton [sic], David H. Keller, Malcolm Jameson, Nictzin Dyalhys [sic], Otis Adelbert Kline--this is but a sampling of the galaxy made at random and from memory, to count them all would be like numbering the Milky Way.

One thing, however, WEIRD TALES writers have in common: ability to tell good stories well. It has been said that "WEIRD TALES prints slick-paper fiction wrapped in pulp." However false or true that estimate may be it is an undisputed fact that more WEIRD TALES writers are "tapped” for inclusion in anthologies than those of any other pulp magazine, that many of its regular contributors are also "names" in the slick-paper field, and that a high percentage of them have had one or more successful books published.

In its quarter-century of publication WEIRD TALES has had many imitators, but no real competitors. Some of these degenerated--or evolved, if you prefer that term --into straight science-fiction magazines, some were so patently sex-motivated that the Post Office and/or the censors took them in hand, some misjudged their market and used shock--shock--shock! as their formula and paid small heed to literary composition. All of them are gone, and of a dozen imitative magazines put out ten years ago not one can be found on the newsstands today. WEIRD TALES enters on its second quarter-century as truly the unique magazine as it was when No. 1 of Volume I was offered to a critical public.

SEABURY QUINN.

(Boldface added.)

Seabury Quinn speaks before the Free Lance Writers Association in Washington, D.C., from an article in The Sunday Star Pictorial Magazine, July 27, 1947, page 15. There are men in the group, but I see the women, who remind me of Helen Hokinson's clubwomen. Could there be another teller of weird tales in this photograph? Photograph by Paul Schmick.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales, May 1923-Part Three

Six authors about whom I know little or nothing at all, all of whom had stories in Weird Tales in May 1923:

William P. Barron (Dates unknown)--I found a newspaper item that mentions a Dr. William P. Barron who was president of the Free Lance Club of writers in Washington, D.C., in 1930 and 1931. If he's our man, then I believe he was the same William P. Barron (1877-1946) who hailed from Bonham, Texas, and served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War I. His story, called "Jungle Beasts," is another example of a found manuscript as the basis for a story. One of the readers of the manuscript is a medical doctor working in an insane asylum.

M. Humphreys (Dates unknown)-"The Floor Above" by M. Humphreys is a diary story, a story that begins with a summons from a friend, and a rooming-house story. H.P. Lovecraft liked "The Floor Above," but good luck finding any evidence of that on this vaunted Internet. The status of Humphreys' tale as one of Lovecraft's favorites seems to be based entirely on a single sentence in Lovecraft's letter to "The Eyrie," printed in October 1923:

"I lately read the May WEIRD TALES, and congratulate you on Mr. Humphrey's 'The Floor Above.' [for a moment I had a shiver which the author didn’t intend—I thought he was going to use an idea which I am planning to use myself!! But it wasn't so, after all], which is a close second to my favorite, 'Beyond the Door'."

(The brackets are in the original. "Beyond the Door," by J. Paul Suter, was in the April 1923 issue of Weird Tales.) As for the identity of M. Humphreys, it would be hard to discover one without having a first name.

Herman Sisk (Dates unknown)--There was a Herman Sisk who lived in Los Angeles, California, and wrote plays and other works. I suspect he was the same Herman Sisk who wrote "The Purple Heart," a short short story about a haunted cabin.

F.K. Moss (Dates unknown)--F.K. Moss' story is called "The Death Cell." There is a framing device again, in this case an introduction by one character followed by a manuscript by another. And now I have to say that reading or simply glancing through these early issues of Weird Tales becomes pretty tiresome, with the same kinds of stories, themes, motifs, devices, and settings, very often with the same kind of writing style, over and over again. You wonder where was the imagination. But then you have to admit to yourself that Weird Tales--and in a larger sense, weird fiction--was just beginning in 1923. It would take awhile before things got good.

F. Walter Wilson (Dates unknown)--I found a reference to an F. Walter Wilson who was a newspaperman in Boston and who may have had a connection to Quebec. The story "The Thunder Voice" is set in Quebec, and so we have another story of Canada. There is also a  found manuscript in the story. The blurb reads: "The Story of a Hairy Monster." That's an intriguing thing for those interested in cryptozoology. The hairy monster of the story might be a gorilla or a wild-man or possibly a Bigfoot creature before it was so named. I'm not sure.

William Merrit (Dates unknown)--William Merrit is going to be hard to find in any online search because of the similarity of his name to that of William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), a well-known painter from Indiana. Merritt's story is called "The Finale," but it's not the last story in the May 1923 issue of Weird Tales. That position goes to . . .

"The Closed Cabinet" by _____ _____, a very long short story written by an anonymous author and reproduced in the tiniest of fonts, all to make it fit, I guess, in the smaller number of pages in the May issue than in the previous two of Weird Tales.

William F. Heitman's illustration for "The Floor Above" by M. Humphreys in Weird Tales, May 1923.

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales, April 1923-Part Three

More authors from the second issue of Weird Tales:

Victor Johns (1882-1960)--I assume that Victor Johns was Victor Emanuel Philip Johns of Kansas City, but I can't say that for sure. Online information on him is nonexistent. In any case, Victor Johns wrote a story of France in Weird Tales, "The Hideous Face." It ends with all italics.

Laurie McClintock & Culpeper Chunn--Culpeper Chunn was Seymour Cunningham Chunn (1889-1927), a young man of Washington, D.C., who tried to kill himself in late 1914. He was paralyzed by his self-inflicted gunshot wound and thereafter went around in a wheelchair. After his wounding, he was committed to St. Elizabeth's Hospital in the nation's capital. Chunn co-authored "The Whispering Thing" with Laurie McClintock. It was the first story by an author known to have been an inmate.

I had thought that Chunn and McClintock might have been a husband-and-wife writing team. Once I learned that Chunn was an inmate, I considered the possibility that McClintock was his nurse or some other kind of helper. I looked for a nurse named Laurie McClintock and found one. He was Gustus Laurie McClintock (1889-1956) of Missouri, nicknamed Guy and Gus. In 1918, when he filled out his draft card, McClintock was a graduate nurse at the Kansas State Hospital, an asylum for the insane at Osawatomie. So if Guy Laurie McClintock was Chunn's co-author, did he go to Washington, D.C., or did Chunn go to Kansas? It must have been the former, although I haven't found any record for him in that city. Or maybe they wrote their collaborative stories by U.S. Mail. "The Whispering Thing" is another story of a Frenchman. France and Frenchmen seem to have been a theme in the April issue of Weird Tales.

Ted Olson (1899-1981)--Theodore B. Olson was a native of Laramie, Wyoming. "The Conquering Will" was his only story in Weird Tales and his only known work of science fiction, weird fiction, or fantasy. It's another tale told from a found manuscript, another tale of the Far North, and another tale of bodily possession by the spirit of a departed person. 

Carroll F. Michener (1885-1970)--Carroll F. Michener was Carroll Kinsey Michener of Spring Valley, Minnesota. He wrote two stories for Weird Tales, "Six Feet of Willow Green" (Apr. 1923) and "The Earth Girl" (Dec. 1924). I haven't read "Six Feet of Willow Green," but I can tell you that it's a story of the South Seas and of the Orient, also another story about snakes and snakebite. It might be worth a look.

C.E. Howard (1858-1930)--Clarence Everett Howard was a satirist and humorist, among many other things. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, he lived a life of accomplishment in Orlando, Florida, and that's where he died in 1930. I assume that he was our man, as "The Parlor Cemetery" is called "a grisly satire," and much of the story takes the form of Southern-inflected dialogue. Howard was known as a satirist and was at one time mayor of Orlando. There is or was a school named after him.

The second issue includes:

• The first voodoo story and the first story set in Central America: "Jungle Death" by Artemus Calloway. The story ends with a smart observation: "Voodooism loses its strength when it mixes up with white men."

• The first story set in historical France: "The Affair of the Man in Scarlet" by Julian Kilman.

• The first Oriental adventure: "The Forty Jars" by Ray McGillivray (Anthony M. Rud). I haven't read "The Forty Jars," but it looks promising.

• The first story by an author known to have been born in Ireland. Though set in England, it is also the first story about Egypt. Entitled "The Hall of the Dead," the story is by Francis D. Grierson.

• More stories of insanity, murder, infidelity; more stories that end in places of confinement, mostly, in this case, in asylums for the insane; and even another short snakebite story, "The Snake Fiend" by Farnsworth Wright.

• A call for contributions, on page 184, beginning with these words: "The Skeleton in Your Closet." The result, I believe, was the first Weird Tales feature and the first readers' contribution feature other than "The Eyrie", "The Cauldron: True Adventures of Terror," conducted by Preston Langley Hickey in four installments, June through October 1923.

Carroll K. Michener, from a newspaper article called "Michener, Defender of Bread, Retires" by Ralph Mason in the Minneapolis Star, July 25, 1957, page 18A.

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

I.W.D. Peters (1870s?-1931)-The Second Woman Author

Née Idella W. Donnally
Aka Ida Donnally Peters, Ida D. Peters
Author, Telephone & Telegraph Operator
Born November 27, 1870s?, Callaghan, Alleghany County, Virginia
Died March 14, 1931, at home, Chastleton Hotel, Washington, D.C.

If you're going to write a biographical sketch of Idella W. Donnally Peters, you'll have to gather and assemble scattered bits of information and not rely on her obituary ("Mrs. Ida D. Peters, Writer, Is Buried" in the Washington, D.C., Evening Star, March 16, 1931, page 7). She was not born on a plantation near Monticello or Oak Hill in Virginia. Instead, she came into the world at Callaghan, a humble place situated in a narrow valley in western Virginia, in the shadows of mountains. Her father was not a doctor. Instead, he was a glovemaker. She is supposed to have attended Powell School in Richmond, Virginia, as well as Women's College of Richmond and what is now called Columbia University in New York City. Some of that can be squared with her work as a telephone and telegraph operator in Richmond. Then again, maybe it can't quite. She was born on November 27. Of that we can be sure. Her obituary doesn't give her age or the year of her birth, but her headstone does, as do census records. She was almost certainly not born in the 1880s, however. More likely, she was born in the early 1870s, possibly in the period 1871 to 1873.

Her father was Allan Donnally (1831-ca. 1905), who, on May 31, 1861, at age thirty, enlisted as a private in Company K, 14th Virginia Cavalry, in service of the Confederate States of America. He served for six months and was discharged on November 22, 1861. Donnally was a farmhand, a glovemaker, and a store clerk. In 1868, he married Margaret E. Dickson. In 1870, they were living in Covington Township, Alleghany County, Virginia. Callaghan, the place of Idella's birth, is in Alleghany County. I suspect she was born in about 1873, possibly a little earlier, possibly in about 1871. I base that on her later employment, in 1889 and after, as a telephone and telegraph operator, a job she could hardly have held at age six. She had an older brother, Charles E. Donnally. He may have been the same Elwood Donnally who died in November 1877 in Alleghany County at age eight.

I haven't found the Donnally family in the 1880 census. In 1888, Allan Donnally was working as a clerk in Richmond. He entered the Old Soldiers Home in Richmond in the 1890s or in 1900. He left that place in April 1900. The last record I have found for Allan Donnally is a census record: in June 1900, he was living in the county poorhouse at Boiling Spring in Alleghany County. He was a widower. An unsupported source on the Internet says that he died in about 1905.

So it may have been that Idella W. Donnally Peters was an only child and that she lost both of her parents when she was still young. There is so much we don't know about her or her family, including something as simple as her middle name. She lost a foot in a childhood accident and walked with a crutch. In 1889, 1891, 1892, and 1900, she was listed in the Richmond city directory as Ida W. Donnally, a telephone operator, with an address at Union Passenger Depot, 320 East Franklin Street. On February 16, 1902, she married (Emmett) Eugene Peters (1880-1933), a druggist, in Baltimore, Maryland. She was employed at the time by Western Union Telegraph Company in the same drugstore where her new husband worked.

In 1912, the Peters moved to Washington, D.C. In the census of 1920, they were enumerated in that city. Ida was employed as a writer for magazines. In 1930, they were in the same city, and she called herself an author of books. Ida D. Peters' obituary says that her early stories were "humorous Chinese sketches." I have no idea what that means. I have found mention of two of her books, Colonial Children and Girls of Long Ago (1930), the latter illustrated by Mabel Pugh (pictured below). She also wrote nonfiction, as well as short stories for children, and her "Sketches of Historic Personages" were broadcast on the radio. She was a member and district auditor of the District of Columbia League of American Pen Women. She died on March 14, 1931, at home in the Chastleton Hotel in Washington, D.C., and was buried at Rock Creek Cemetery, also in the nation's capital. Her husband died exactly two years later, on March 14, 1933, after having fallen out of a barn loft and fracturing his skull. They are at rest now, side by side, as their shared headstone reads, "Until the Glorious Resurrection."

* * *

I discovered the identity of I.D.W. Peters by looking at The FictionMags Index. There is a story--a single story--listed there by Ida Donnally Peters, "A Lover of Freedom," which appeared in Detective Story Magazine in the issue of June 29, 1920. Just two entries above that is the lone story by I.W.D. Peters, "The Gallows," which was in the inaugural issue of Weird Tales, March 1923. That was the connection, and it led after a little research to an answer to the question of "Who Was I.W.D. Peters?" Now we know. Thanks to The FictionMags Index.

* * *

I have a few more credits for her:

• "The Girl of His Dreams" (short story) in the Boston Herald, Aug. 6, 1911, magazine section, p. 9.
• "Woman: The Same Yesterday, Today and Forever" (Bible story) in The Woman's Magazine, St. Louis Star and Times, Jan. 16, 1912, p. 13.
• "The Chinese Language" (nonfiction) in the Belleville (Illinois) News-Democrat, Sept. 7, 1912, p. 22.
• "All on a Summer Night" (short story) in the Nashville Banner, Dec. 9, 1916, p. 17.

These works were probably all syndicated.

* * *

I.W.D. Peters' Story in Weird Tales
"The Gallows" (Mar. 1923)

Further Reading
"Mrs. Ida D. Peters, Writer, Is Buried" in the Washington, D.C., Evening Star, March 16, 1931, page 7.

I.W.D. Peters' Story:

"The Gallows" is yet another prison story, another story of marital infidelity, and another story of murder. It's told in the first person by a man named Traylor, who has killed a man with whom his wife was having an affair. Traylor is waiting to be hanged for his crime, and he wants to die.  He hopes that his wife's efforts to save him will fail. The story closes with a statement made by the prison warden, another example of an introduction or closing to a story that helps to illuminate or explain it.

"The Gallows" is brief, a mere three pages long and the first of what Weird Tales called a "five-minute story." It's a crime story, a love story (love gone wrong), and a confessional. There aren't any weird elements in it at all. The first issue of Weird Tales has several nonfiction fillers. We might as well say that it has several fictional fillers, too, "The Gallows" being one of them. A magazine made leaner would have left them all out.

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Joel Townsley Rogers (1896-1984)-A Second Story of the South

Joel Townsley Rogers was born on November 22, 1896, in Sedalia, Missouri, and attended Harvard University. His studies were cut short by his entry into the U.S. Naval Reserve in June 1917. He served two years and more, separating in August 1919. Rogers' writing career began right away. From February 1920 ("The Battle Cruiser Lady" in Snappy Stories) until February 1959 ("No Matter Where You Go" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction), he had scores of stories in American pulp and slick magazines, often under the byline Roger Curly (for his curly hair). Rogers also wrote several books, including the murder mystery The Red Right Hand (1945). He was one of several tellers of weird tales who called Washington, D.C., home, and that's where he died, on October 1, 1984. "Hark! The Rattle!" was his only story for Weird Tales. 

I have written about Rogers and his book The Red Right Hand before. Click here for a biography and here for my essay on The Red Right Hand. By the way, one of the characters in the book is Inis St. Erme. His name is an anagram of "Sinister me."

Joel Townsley Rogers' Story:

"Hark! The Rattle" is a brief tale set in a New York nightclub called the Purple Lily. There are two main characters, an intense and agitated young man named Tain Dirk, and an older man, his questioner and eventually his accuser, named Jerry Hammer.

So, Dirk and Hammer.

"Hark! The Rattle!" is an unusual story written in an unconventional style. The main action takes place in the present. An explanation of the current situation comes in the form of a flashback set in the Okechobee [sic] Swamp of Florida. The present is exactly the present, that is, in early 1923. The flashback takes place on the day Dirk was born, January 1, 1899.

Rogers' story isn't exactly a club story, even if it is set in a club. The first club story in Weird Tales is probably still to come. It is a murder mystery of sorts, though, and the first of that genre to appear, as long as we can be generous in applying the label. After "Ooze" by Anthony M. Rud, "Hark! The Rattle!" is also the second story of the American South in "The Unique Magazine," and that brings up a matter of interest.

When I was a student of literature, I read a lot of novels by Southern authors, and I read a lot about Southern literature. When you read about Southern literature, you're sure to come upon the term or category Southern Gothic. The works of William Faulkner (1897-1962), Carson McCullers (1917-1967), and Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) are frequently thrown into that category. There are, of course, others, including Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), who contributed to Weird Tales. I didn't understand very well what "Southern Gothic" means when I was a student. I'm not sure I understand very much better now, although Faulkner's story "A Rose for Emily" comes to mind when I consider it.

Ellen Glasgow (1873-1945), a native Virginian, is known to have used and perhaps to have originated the term Southern Gothic. Her comments on what she called "the Southern Gothic School" first came in a talk she gave in front of the Friends of the Princeton Library on April 25, 1935. Her talk appeared as an article entitled "Heroes and Monsters" in The Saturday Review of Literature, May 4, 1935. The first use of the term that I have found in American newspapers is in a yearend summary of Southern literature, "Hatred, Small Town Tensions Were Major Themes," written by Harnett T. Kane (1910-1984) and published in the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger on December 19, 1948, page 44. Kane wrote:

Eddison [sic] Marshall, with "Castle in the Swamp," presented a heavily hued Southern Gothic tale in the traditions of "Wuthering Heights."

Although Edison Marshall (1894-1967) was born in my home state of Indiana, he lived for most of his life in the South. He also contributed to Weird Tales, although he didn't know it: his contributions were posthumous. The castle or old manor house is a staple of the Gothic romance. If Wuthering Heights is Gothic, then Jane Eyre is more Gothic still. In 1943, producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur set Jane Eyre in the global south, in this case the Caribbean, in their film I Walked with a Zombie. There is of course a big house and a woman who comes from the outside to learn its secrets.

We should remember in all of this Leslie Fiedler's view of American literature, dazzlingly articulated in his Love and Death in the American Novel (Dell/Delta, revised edition, 1966) and summarized in a couple of quotes:

[. . . ] the American novel is pre-eminently a novel of terror (p. 26)

and:

It is the Gothic form that has been most fruitful in the hands of our best writers [. . .]. (p. 28)

In other words, in essence, all of American literature, or the mainstream of American literature, is Gothic.

Joel Townsley Rogers was also a Southerner. You could call his story "Hark! The Rattle!" a Southern Gothic work, for there is violence and murder, superstition and supernatural workings, poverty and decay, and more than one Southern, grotesque type, including "[a]n old crone," a tobacco-spitting man with yellow eyes and a gun in the crook of his arm--Rogers called him "Poor white trash"--and another old crone, this one an American Indian. Inside their "dreary hut," fashioned from the swamp, is an unseen young woman in the process of giving birth. "He dies!" screams the old Indian woman, pointing at Hammer's friend. "We want his soul!" And so a weird twist unwinds in the story.

The point of all of this is that I wonder whether American authors, editors, and readers of the early to mid twentieth century saw the South as a kind of foreign land, replete with its own foreign customs, traditions, cultures, and peoples, a kind of equivalent to the global south and all of its hot, humid, dank, dark, and gloomy places. I wonder if to them the Mason-Dixon Line was like an American equator. Here above it, in the North--in Chicago, New York, and the Northeast--weird things are less likely to come about. But the region below it--the American South--is a place and the proper setting for Gothic terrors and Gothic horrors.

Two more things, first, "Hark! The Rattle!" is written in a strange, dream-like, almost hallucinogenic or surrealistic way. I'm not sure that Rogers' approach and style changed very much between 1923 and 1945, when The Red Right Hand was published.

And second, in "Hark! The Rattle!," just as in "Ooze," a monster comes from the swamp, although this one is of a far different kind. That made me remember that Grendel, the monster in Beowulf, is also a creature of such places:

A foe in the hall-building: this horrible stranger
Was Grendel entitled, the march-stepper famous
Who dwelt in the moor-fens, the marsh and the fastness;

Alternatively:

Grendel this monster grim was called,
march-riever mighty, in moorland living,
in fen and fastness; 

So maybe the swamp monster of American popular culture goes all the way back to Beowulf, just as the idea weird seems to do.

"March," by the way, refers to marches or borderlands. A march-stepper or march-riever, then, is a wanderer, thief, or plunderer of the borderlands. There are marches--the Bossonian Marches--in Robert E. Howard's Hyborea. William Hope Hodgson wrote about such a place in The House on the Borderland (1908), though his use of the word denotes something far different. "On borderland we run," sang U2 in "A Sort of Homecoming," the unforgettable first track of The Unforgettable Fire (1984). And to come full circle, William Faulkner's last book was The Reivers (1962), adapted to a movie starring Steve McQueen in 1968. "Rieve" or "reive" is chiefly a Scottish spelling, and so we're back to Scottish words again. "Reave" seems to be the preferred spelling. Blogger doesn't like either of the first two spellings but is okay with the third.

Edison Marshall's Castle in the Swamp, in a Dell map-back edition from 1951. Note the blurb on the back cover. In addition to evoking Gothic imagery, it is written almost like lines from Beowulf: "Sinister was the swamp . . ." Note also that Dell published both Marshall's book and Fiedler's.

Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Earl Peirce, Jr. (1917-1983)-Part Five

In Washington, D.C.

By July 1937, when he wrote to Weird Tales about the death and legacy of H.P. Lovecraft, Earl Peirce, Jr., was living in Washington, D.C., with his family. His father had been appointed to a position there with the U.S. Forest Service. Earl Peirce, Sr., would spend the rest of his forestry career in the nation's capital, retiring in 1951 after more than forty years on the job.

"The Death Mask" may have been the last story that Earl Peirce, Jr., sent to Weird Tales from his Milwaukee home. It was published in the issue of April 1937. "The Homicidal Diary" followed in October 1937. Nearly a whole year went by before Peirce had his next story in "The Unique Magazine." Written with Bruce Bryan, "The White Rat" was published in September 1938.

Born in Washington, D.C., Leslie Bruce Bryan (1906-2004) was an archaeologist and anthropologist known for his work in the American Southwest and on the Channel Islands. He worked at the County Museum of Natural History, Science, and Art (now the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History) and the Southwest Museum of Los Angeles, not only as a man in the field but also as a curator and a staff writer for The Masterkey, the magazine of the Southwest Museum. Between 1932 and 1939, he wrote or co-wrote five stories published in Weird Tales and its sister title, Oriental Stories. During the same period, he had twelve letters printed in weird fiction magazines.

Bryan's first collaborator in weird fiction was Dudley S. Corlett (ca. 1880-1946), with whom he wrote "The Dancer of Quena," published in Oriental Stories in Spring 1932. Born in England, Corlett lived in southern California for many years. Like Bryan, he worked in scientific or semi-scientific fields, in his case, botany and tropical agriculture.

Bruce Bryan returned to his native city during the early or mid 1930s. He married his second wife, Mary Katherine Fahrenwald, in Washington, D.C., in November 1936. In 1940, he registered for the draft while living there, and like Earl Peirce, Jr., he called himself a writer. During the previous decade, Bryan had had stories not only in weird fiction magazines but also in Argosy, as well as in Western, crime, mystery, and detective titles. Bryan returned to California in the 1940s.

While living in Washington, D.C., Bryan became a member of a Weird Tales fan club. Fan and letter writer Julius Hopkins led the group. Other members included Everil Worrell (1893-1969) and Seabury Quinn (1889-1969). Earl Peirce, Jr., joined, too. Unfortunately, I don't have any details on him except that he was a member and that he co-wrote a story with Bruce Bryan.

After collaborating with Bryan, Earl Peirce had just two more stories in Weird Tales, "The Stroke of Twelve" (June/July 1939) and "Portrait of a Bride" (Jan. 1940). He followed up with "Legacy of the Dead" in Terror Tales (July 1940) and "The Shadow of Nirvana" in Strange Stories (Feb. 1941). Although Peirce had other stories in the pulp magazines of the 1940s, these were his last in the weird fiction titles.

On April 16, 1940, Earl Peirce, Jr., was counted in the U.S. census in Washington, D.C. He was with his family at 3738 Huntington Street, N.W. If the house at that address now is the same as in 1940, then it was a pretty fine one. Later that year, on October 16, 1940, Peirce filled out his draft card, giving his employer as the General Federation of Women's Clubs. On May 7, 1941, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. (His younger brother Dudley Beach Peirce enlisted the same day.) On December 26, 1941, less than three weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Earl Peirce, Jr., married Gloria Hallett Grimm (1922-1999), also in Washington, D.C. The world had suddenly become a very serious place.

I don't think it was mere coincidence that Peirce's writing for the pulps went on pause in 1941. Military service, marriage, and world war have ways of interrupting a person's plans. He had just one story published during the war and only three more after that. His last came in October 1949, just thirteen years after his first.

To be continued . . .

Earl Peirce's fifth story in Weird Tales was "The White Rat," cowritten with Bruce Bryan and published in the September 1938 issue. "The White Rat" is set in Norway. It begins as a club story, but the middle and end take place in a remote northern location. Despite the weird-fiction or gothic-romance elements of separation and isolation, "The White Rat" actually approaches science fiction. I guess we can call it a weird science story.

If there is weird science, there should probably be a weird--or mad--scientist, and there is in this story. There is also a tale told of a medical doctor with psychopathic or sociopathic proclivities. We have seen characters like that before. They're also with us in the real world.

"The White Rat" has similarities to Frankenstein. It's sort of a Frankenstein's monster of a story, too. There are elements not only of Mary Shelley's seminal gothic romance/proto-science fiction novel but also of stories by H.P. Lovecraft, including "The White Ape" (Weird Tales, Apr. 1924), "The Whisperer in Darkness" (Weird Tales, Aug. 1931), "The Dunwich Horror" (Weird Tales, Apr. 1929), and "Cool Air" (Tales of Magic and Mystery, Mar. 1928). The story was written before Watson and Crick found out about DNA, so maybe we can forgive some of its fumbling about genetics. There are, however, suggestions of Lamarckian evolution or Lysenkoism in its pages. I'm pretty sure that both would have been discredited by the time Peirce and Bryan wrote their story. Finally, the weird fiction or science fiction trope of the body frozen in a block of ice and waiting to be revivified is central to the plot. In that, "The White Rat" anticipated Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943), The Thing from Another World (1951), and the Minnesota Iceman hoax of the 1960s. There is also something of The Fly (1958) in it, another film from the future.

The illustration above is the work of Virgil Finlay. It appears as a heading to the story. In combination with the first few pages of the story, it gives away part of the plot and part of the surprise. Before long, we've got it all figured out pretty well. Only the details are missing until the end. The issue in which "The White Rat" appeared was an all-star issue with stories and poems by Seabury Quinn, Algernon Blackwood, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, H.P. Lovecraft, Edmond Hamilton, Clark Ashton Smith, Manly Wade Wellman, and Paul Ernst. That was pretty good company for young Earl Peirce, Jr.

Thanks to Randal A. Everts for information on Julius Hopkins' fan club.
Text and captions copyright 2020, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Earl Peirce, Jr.-Aside No. 2

From 1936 to 1941, Earl Peirce, Jr. (1917-1983) had ten stories published in weird fiction magazines. His first was "Doom of the House of Duryea" (Weird Tales, Oct. 1936), published when he was nineteen. His last was "The Shadow of Nirvana" (Strange Stories, Feb. 1941), published in the month that he turned twenty-four. Those ten stories were the whole of his science fiction/fantasy output according to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. (There may be one more in those genres, "The Cat," a vignette published in Fantasmagoria in the Winter issue, 1937.) Peirce had nine more stories in crime and detective titles from 1937 to 1949, this according to The FictionMags Index.*

During that same period, 1936 to 1941, Peirce's friend, contemporary, and fellow Milwaukeean Robert Bloch (1917-1994) had by himself and with other authors forty stories in the same type magazines. This is according to Thomas G.L. Cockcroft in his Index to the Weird Fiction Authors: Index by Author (1967). (If the count is off, the error is mine.) Although he had a few stories in fanzines and small magazines during the early 1930s, Bloch's first in a large or national magazine was "The Feast in the Abbey," which appeared in Weird Tales in January 1935. Bloch was just seventeen when "The Feast in the Abbey" was published, but his macabre imagination was already firmly in place. Just wait until you find out what was in his feast.

I believe that Earl Peirce, Jr., was in Milwaukee from late 1933 or early 1934 to about 1936 or 1937. Only four of his stories are from that period. A letter by Peirce printed in the July 1937 issue of Weird Tales and dispatched from Washington, D.C., indicates that he and his family had moved by then. Peirce's co-authorship of "The White Rat" (Weird Tales, Sept. 1938) with Bruce Bryan (1906-2004), who also lived in the nation's capital during the 1930s, is further indication of a move. A look at the 1940 U.S. census confirms it finally, for the whole Peirce family was in Washington, D.C., that year, and perhaps for the only time in his life, Earl Peirce, Jr., was able to tell the enumerator that he was a writer.

That leaves three or four years, from the time they were about fifteen to about age nineteen or twenty, for Robert Bloch and Earl Peirce, Jr., to have been within a stone's throw of each other in Milwaukee. A later interview with Bloch (excerpted in a future part of this series) confirms that they met and talked about writing. As we have seen, there are also connections, albeit slender, between their respective stories. But did they collaborate on bringing a new fictional universe into being? I'm not sure. Or maybe I should say probably not. Or maybe I shouldn't say that. The universe created by H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) and members of his circle would have been before them both as a model. Both were of course Lovecraft fans. Both were also young, enthusiastic, and ready to make their mark on the genres of fantasy and weird fiction. Bloch at least seems to have begun building a kind of a mini-mythos based on his own fictional grimoire Mysteries of the Worm (or De Vermis Mysteriis, as Lovecraft dubbed it), penned by the equally fictional Ludvig Prinn. That mini-mythos seems to have been made independently of Lovecraft's  larger (and so-called) Cthulhu Mythos. Only later--later in terms of months, I guess--did Lovecraft adapt it to his own.** Lovecraft, who was by all indications kind and generous to other writers, allowed the young Bloch to use his creations in Bloch's own stories. But we'll probably never know whether Peirce played any large or lasting part in Robert Bloch's imaginings. Bloch after all went on to a long and illustrious career as an author. All indications are that Earl Peirce, Jr., no longer wrote after the 1940s.

*The FictionMags Index lists "The Cat" as well and is the source of that bit of information.
**I guess we should consider the possibility, too, that Bloch created his own grimoire and author so as to gain entry into Lovecraft's circle. Imagine the satisfaction of a teenaged author whose creation is adopted and used by the Master.

Copyright 2020 Terence E. Hanley

Bruce Bryan (1906-2004)

Leslie Bruce Bryan
Author, Editor, Archaeologist, Anthropologist
Born January 16, 1906, Washington, D.C.
Died September 16, 2004, North Hollywood, California

Dudley S. Corlett's collaborator on the story "The Dancer of Quena" (Oriental Stories, Spring 1932) was another adopted Angeleno, writer, archaeologist, and anthropologist Bruce Bryan. Born Leslie Bruce Bryan on January 16, 1906, he was a native of Washington, D.C. His father was Paul M. Bryan, a government worker. His mother was Ethel (Hughes) Bryan. In 1947, Bruce Bryan earned himself some notoriety by throwing his mother out of their North Hollywood home, on Mother's Day no less. I'm not sure how that all turned out, but Bruce R. Bryan, son of Bruce Bryan, also evicted that day, later died in an automobile accident. You can read about the whole mess on the blog 1947project: The original Los Angeles time travel blog, here. Bruce Bryan was first married to Charlotta R. Bryan, maiden name unknown. His second wife was (Mary) Katherine Fahrenwald, whom he wed on November 25, 1936, in Washington, D.C. Bruce R. Bryan, the son, was Charlotta's child, not Katherine's. That might have made the eviction a little easier on the boy, but hardly by much, I imagine.

Despite his successes as a writer, Bruce Bryan was known as an archaeologist and anthropologist. He started in his career as the first staff archaeologist with the County Museum of Natural History, Science, and Art (now the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History) in 1926. In that capacity, he carried out investigations on San Nicolas Island, one of the Channel Islands, in October-December 1926. Soon after that, he went to the Southwest Museum of Los Angeles, where he eventually became archaeological curator. In the 1930 census, he listed his occupation as staff writer for a trade magazine. That may have been for the magazine of the museum, called The Masterkey. Bryan was also editor of that magazine at some point. Further expeditions followed his first, to Carpinteria in about 1930 and to the Dragoon Mountains of southeastern Arizona in 1932. Bryan left the museum to return to Washington, D.C., and to work in public service. He was once again with the Southwest Museum from 1959 until his retirement in 1983. He carried out further archaeological explorations of San Nicolas Island in 1958 and 1960.

Bruce Bryan had a respectable career as a writer for popular magazines and newspapers. He had five stories in Oriental Stories and Weird Tales, plus a dozen letters in those two titles and in Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror and The Magic Carpet Magazine. All were printed in the period 1932 to 1939. Like his collaborator Dudley S. Corlett, Bryan wrote about movies for Art and Archaeology. His article "Movie Realism and Archaeological Fact" was published in that magazine in the October issue of 1924. I have also found a story, "Shakespeare Said It!", in Parade of Youth for June 26, 1938, and mention of an unpublished book called The Archaeology of San Nicolas Island. In 1970, Bryan published a version of his research in the book Archaeological Explorations on San Nicolas Island. Readers of children's literature will remember San Nicolas Island as the setting for Scott O'Dell's wonderfully good novel Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960).

After a very long life and career, L. Bruce Brian died on September 16, 2004, in North Hollywood, California, at age ninety-eight.

Bruce Bryan's Stories in Oriental Stories and Weird Tales

"The Dancer of Quena," with Dudley S. Corlett, in Oriental Stories (Spring, 1932) 

"The Ho-Ho Kam Horror" in Weird Tales (Sept. 1937)

"The White Rat," with Earl Peirce, Jr., in Weird Tales (Sept. 1938) 

"The Sitter in the Mound" in Weird Tales (June/July 1939)

"Return from Death" in Weird Tales (Aug. 1939)

Bruce Bryan's Letters to Weird Fiction Magazines

Oriental Stories, Spring 1932

Oriental Stories, Summer 1932

Oriental Stories, Winter 1932

Weird Tales, Feb. 1932

Weird Tales, Apr. 1932

Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, Oct. 1932

The Magic Carpet Magazine, Apr. 1933

The Magic Carpet Magazine, Jan. 1934

Weird Tales, Nov. 1936

Weird Tales, Feb. 1937

Weird Tales, July 1937

Weird Tales, Oct. 1937

Further Reading

"History of Archaeological Research," Natural History Museum, here. 

Obituary of Bruce Bryan, here.

From the Los Angeles Times, October 14, 1969, part II, page 1. In the same crime, the burglars made off with poison darts. That sounds like the beginnings of a weird tale . . . 

Happy Mother's Day to All Moms!

(Including Mrs. Bryan)

Text copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley