Theda Kenyon (1894-1997)

Author, Poet, Lecturer

Born September 19, 1894, Kings County, New York

Died November 16, 1997, Montclair, New Jersey

Theda Kenyon enjoyed a long life as a writer and lecturer. Although she was the daughter of an Episcopal priest and theologian, she is best known today for authoring a book on witches. And though her first name is an anagram for "death," she lived for over a century. Theda was born on September 19, 1894, in New York, presumably in Brooklyn, where she lived much of her life. She saw her name in print as early as 1907 when she wrote a letter to St. Nicholas magazine. Encouraged early in her career by New York Times journalist F.C. Mortimer, she wrote poems for many different magazines, including The Argosy, Munsey's, Everybody's Magazine, McCall's, Breezy Stories, and The Red Cross Magazine. She was also published in the New York Times. Her lone work for Weird Tales was a short story called "The House of the Golden Eyes," published in the September 1930 issue, a nice gift for her thirty-sixth birthday. A tale for Droll Stories is worth mentioning if only for its provocative title: "This Sex Stuff!" (February 1927).

Theda Kenyon wrote many books, most sensationally a book entitled Witches Still Live: A Study of the Black Art Today (1929). An article of the same name was published in North American Review in November 1929. Other books included Jeanne (novel, 1928), Certain Ladies (verse, 1930), Scarlet Anne (novel in verse form, 1939), Pendulum (novel, 1942), The Golden Feather (novel, 1943), Black Dawn (1944), That Skipper from Stonington (a fictionalized biography of Richard Fanning Loper, 1947), and Something Gleamed (1948). She also read from her poetry and prose on the radio and in front of women's clubs and other social and cultural groups. She even once shared a bill at a poetry reading with Edwin Arlington Robinson and Robert Frost.

Theda Kenyon died on November 16, 1997, in Montclair, New Jersey. She was 103 years old.

Theda Kenyon's Story in Weird Tales

"The House of the Golden Eyes" (Sept. 1930)

Further Reading

Some of Theda Kenyon's works are available on the Internet, while others might be had from a secondhand book dealer or website.

Author and poet Theda Kenyon (1894-1997)

For more on Theda Kenyon, see my posting of December 27, 2011, here.
Text copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Why Tellers of Weird Tales?

Like an undead creature or a soul searching through the ages for contentment, Weird Tales has had many lives and incarnations. At the end of its first year in print, the magazine--perennially in peril of disappearing from the newsstand--came out with a giant-sized triple issue (May/June/July 1924) of 192 pages. Within those pages was an essay by Otis Adelbert Kline and entitled "Why Weird Tales?" In it, the author made the case for continuing the magazine, not just as a venture or diversion but as an obligation, even a necessity. He believed that Weird Tales would prove "instrumental in discovering or uncovering some American writer who will leave to posterity what Poe and Hawthorne have bequeathed to the present generation." Near the end of his essay, the anonymous author of "Why Weird Tales?" quoted Doctor Frank Crane (1861-1928), a popular speaker and columnist of the day. "What I write is my tombstone," Crane stated, a sentiment leading to the closing paragraph and the upshot of the essay:

So Weird Tales has endeavored from its inception and will endeavor in the future to find and publish those stories that will make their writers immortal. It will play its humble but necessary part in perpetuating those personalities that are worthy to be crowned as immortals.

Although they have not yet reached immortality, many of the authors in Weird Tales are known even today, having escaped from the pulp jungle and into the domain of literature. The list of authors who were first published in Weird Tales or who gained their fame in the magazine's pages is long and impressive: H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore--even so unlikely a figure as Tennessee Williams.

But what about the other writers, all those scores of names unknown to us today and perhaps obscure even in their own time? In this age when the amount of information available to the everyday reader is proliferating on the Internet, it's difficult, sometimes impossible, to find anything about the lesser-known men and women who contributed to "The Unique Magazine." Even when you do find some nugget of information, it isn't enough to take to the bank. Sometimes the information is there, but it's often scattered across the face of the Internet. So why not a central location for biography and bibliography of Weird Tales artists and writers?

When I started on my research into Weird Tales, I of course encountered all the familiar names again and again. But there were so many unknown to me. Who were these people, so many of whom had such colorful names? What else did they write? Where and how did they live? The stereotype of the writer is varied: the man living on the fringes of society, writing away in his garret (like Hawthorne), the wasted alcoholic (like Poe), the rapid-fire wordsmith, the bluestocking, the dabbler, the hack, and so on. Rather than fall back on those stereotypes, I decided to look into the lives of the writers and artists whose work appeared in Weird Tales. Lovecraft and Howard have had whole libraries written about them. (They have in fact borne out the essayist's prediction for Weird Tales.) This blog is for the others. I can't guarantee them immortality, but I can at least revive something of their lives and work in the same way that editors and publishers have revived Weird Tales, "The Unique Magazine," time after time.

Copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Karl W. Ganzlin (1909-2007)

Author, Teacher, Newspaperman

Born January 20, 1909, Sauk City, Wisconsin

Died December 28, 2007, Sauk Prairie, Wisconsin

Karl William Ganzlin was a friend and associate of August Derleth, one of the most prolific of contributors to Weird Tales and an author who perhaps more than anyone kept its spirit alive. Born within weeks of each other, Ganzlin and Derleth were friends as youngsters. Ganzlin earned mention in a couple of Derleth's works of non-fiction. Together, they wrote a story called "The Conradi Affair" for the October 1928 issue of "The Unique Magazine." They were only nineteen years old at the time. Derleth was a veteran author by then, having written his first story for Weird Tales at seventeen. "The Conradi Affair" was Ganzlin's only story for the magazine.

Ganzlin was born on January 20, 1909, in Sauk City, Wisconsin. He spoke German until entering grade school and during World War II served as an interrogator of German prisoners as an officer in the U.S. Army. He began teaching English and German at Sauk City High School in 1932 and resumed that career after three years of service in the United States and Europe. He wrote a single story for Weird Tales but witnessed true horrors when his unit entered Buchenwald concentration camp as the war was ending. Teaching until 1950, Ganzlin got into the newspaper business for a year with The Pioneer Press (at Derleth's urging). In later years, he worked for other firms and for a time edited a monthly house organ for Badger Ordnance. He died on December 28, 2007, in Sauk Prairie, Wisconsin, doing one of the things he liked best: watching football. He was nearing his ninety-ninth birthday as the year 2007 neared its end.

Karl W. Ganzlin's Story in Weird Tales

"The Conradi Affair" (Oct. 1928) with August Derleth

Further Reading

Karl Ganzlin lived into the age of Internet obituaries. You can read an account of his life on the website of Wisconsin News, here.

Lacking a photograph of Karl Ganzlin, I can offer one of his friend and co-author, August Derleth (1909-1971). This one probably dates from the late 1920s or 1930s.

Ganzlin and Derleth's story, "The Conradi Affair," was published in Weird Tales in October 1928. The cover is by C.C. Senf.

Update (Mar. 19, 2023): Karl William Ganzlin in his yearbook photograph at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1932. Ganzlin majored in German. His thesis was "Lessing's Religious Views as Portrayed in His Outstanding Works." Presumably his subject was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781).

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Edgar Daniel Kramer (1887-1966)

Poet, Author, Teacher

Born October 9, 1887, Baltimore, Maryland

Died July 27, 1966, Baltimore, Maryland

Edgar Daniel Kramer was a prolific author of short stories and poems, publishing dozens of pieces in magazines and newspapers, everything from Breezy Stories to the New York Times. Born on October 9, 1887, in Baltimore, Maryland, he was the oldest of Henry and Margaret Kramer's dozen children. He spent a good deal of his life teaching and caring for children.

In 1910, Kramer graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. That would have put him three years ahead of Jacob Clark Henneberger (1890-1969), later the co-founder of Weird Tales magazine. I don't see any reason why the two would not have known each other.

As a young man, Kramer taught at the Stone School in Cornwall Heights, New York (now known as the Storm King School). In all, he taught high school and college for ten years. After the death of his parents, Kramer returned to Baltimore, where he assumed the role of head of the household of eight of his siblings, some of whom were adults, some still minors. Through it all, he wrote, beginning as early as 1919 with a poem, "Ulysses of Ithaca," in Munsey's magazine, then with increasing frequency in every manner of pulp magazine from the 1920s onward. Girl Stories and Man Stories, Pep Stories and Two-Gun Western Stories, Top Notch and Ace-High Magazine--Kramer's work knew no bounds. He wrote just one story for Weird Tales. Entitled "Murder Mask," it appeared in the June 1937 issue. Between the January 1935 and June/July 1939 issues of "The Unique Magazine," he also published seventeen poems, from "Wharf Watchman" to "Circe." He is also the first author I have discussed so far to have had work published in The Magic Carpet Magazine, a short-lived companion to Weird Tales. Finally, his poem, "The Dying Tramp," was published in the magazine Unknown Fantasy Fiction in June 1940.

Kramer continued seeing his work in print even late in life. His "Hell's Acre Hurler" appeared in Ten-Story Sports (January 1957) as the pulps were fading. The New York Times published his verse occasionally from 1924 until 1959. According to his obituary, Kramer had "close ties to the Christian Church." Late in life, he wrote two books about Christ, A Tribute to Jesus (1955) and Your Christ and Mine (1965).

Edgar Daniel Kramer was born on October 9, 1887, in Baltimore, thirty-eight years and two days after Edgar Allan Poe died in that same city. The two poets shared a Cristian name. Kramer died on July 27, 1966, at Mercy Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He was seventy-eight years old.

Edgar Daniel Kramer's Story & Poems in The Magic Carpet Magazine and Weird Tales

All below are from Weird Tales unless otherwise designated. All below are also poems unless otherwise designated.

• "Furlough" in The Magic Carpet Magazine (1933)
• "Wharf Watchman" (Jan. 1935)
• "Old Salt" (Aug. 1935)
• "Bride of Baal" (May 1936)
• "Hagar" (July 1936)
• "The Black Gang" (Nov. 1936)
• "Vespers" (Dec. 1936)
• "Murder Mask" (short story) (June 1937)
• "City in the Sea" (Jan. 1937)
• "Dead Singer" (Feb. 1937)
• "Rescued" (Mar. 1937)
• "Ultimate" (May 1937)
• "Grave-Stones" (Nov. 1937)
• "Microcosms" (July 1938)
• "The Jolly Hangman" (Sept. 1938)
• "Crazy Nell" (Feb. 1939)
• "Trinities" (Apr. 1939)
• "Dust" (May 1939)
• "Circe" (June/July 1939)

In addition, Kramer had a poem, "Dying Tramp," in Unknown Fantasy Fiction in June 1940. 

Further Reading

• "Edgar Kramer, 78, Poet; Service Set Saturday" in the Baltimore Evening Sun, July 28, 1966, page 40.
• "Murder Mask" in 100 Wild Little Weird Tales, edited by Robert Weinberg, et al. (Barnes and Noble, 1994)
• Some of Kramer's poetry is available on the Internet and no doubt in other places where popular poetry is published.

Edgar Daniel Kramer's poem "Furlough" appeared in The Magic Carpet Magazine in April 1933. The cover is by Margaret Brundage.

Kramer was so prolific as a poet, his verse is likely to show up anywhere. This poem was printed in a school yearbook.

This one is from an unknown source, but it has the look of books published by Ideal Publishing Company.

Edgar Daniel Kramer (1887-1966), a yearbook photo from 1910, presumably from Franklin and Marshall College.

Updated March 15, 2023.

Thanks to Randal A. Everts for the photograph of Edgar Daniel Kramer.
Text and captions copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Paul Ellsworth Triem (1882-1976)

Aka Paul Ellsworth, Scott Ellsworth, Edgar P. Meynell

Author, Journalist

Born March 4, 1882, Manchester, Iowa

Died April 14, 1976, Seattle, Washington

Newspaperman and author Paul Ellsworth Triem contributed two stories to Weird Tales during the magazine's first few months in print--and then no more. Those two stories came near the beginning of Triem's quarter century of writing for the pulps and shortly before tragedy struck his family.

Triem was born on March 4, 1882, in Manchester, Iowa, and lived in Iowa until about 1910. Triem worked for a newspaper in Seattle as a writer and editor during the following decade and sold a story--"An Appeal to Caesar"--to The Argosy in 1915. Nearing middle age in the early 1920s, Triem began selling stories and serials to pulp magazines with more success. "Vials of Insects" (May 1923) and "The Evening Wolves" (June/July-Aug. 1923), written for Weird Tales, were among his earliest.

Triem specialized in westerns and detective stories. His "Mother Hansen" stories appeared in Detective Story Magazine for most of the 1920s, and he wrote a novel called Alias John Doe, A Detective Story, published in 1930. Triem sold dozens more stories to Western Story Magazine, Romantic Range, Far West Illustrated, Clues Detective Stories, and other titles between 1922 and 1949, under his own name and two pseudonyms, Paul Ellsworth and Scott Ellsworth. Triem also wrote non-fiction books, the titles of which suggest a combination of hucksterism and quackery: Direct Healing (1914; 1916), The Healing Mind (1922), The Mind Magnet (1924), and The Gist of New Thought, or Your Mind Dynamo and How to Use It (1916; 1925).

Triem was married twice. His first wife, Iowan Minnie Wetzstein, died in August 1923, the same month in which Triem's second and last story for Weird Tales was published. Triem's second wife was poet Helen Eva Platnik, known as Eve Triem. Eve was born on November 2, 1902, in New York City, and educated at the University of California at Berkeley. She and Triem were married in 1924 and moved to Dubuque, Iowa, in 1936, the year in which, according to an online biography of her, she began writing poetry in earnest. The couple later returned to the West Coast. (The names of Triem's wives come in part from a genealogical website, here. Information on the website is undocumented and seems to be the sole source online for the name "Helen Eva Platnik.")

Eve Triem was devoted to her husband of five decades and wrote poems to him throughout his life. Some were published after he died in the collection Dark to Glow (1979). Eve Triem authored seven books of poetry in all. She also wrote a critical study of the work of her friend, poet e.e. cummings. Paul Ellsworth Triem died on April 14, 1976, in Seattle, Washington. Son of a homeopathic physician and author of books on healing and the mind, he had lived to be ninety-four years old. Eve Triem followed him in death on December 26, 1992, in Brookline, Massachusetts. 

By the way, Triem's son, Justin Dewey Triem (1909-1991), was a comic book writer and artist of the 1930s and '40s. The younger Triem's credits included stories for Captain Marvel Adventures, The Marvel Family, Sub-Mariner, Marvel Mystery Comics, and Junior Miss.

Paul Ellsworth Triem's Stories and Letter in Weird Tales

"Vials of Insects" (May 1923)

"The Evening Wolves" (Two-part serial, June/July and Aug. 1923)

Letter to "The Eyrie" (Sept. 1923)

Further Reading

Paul Ellsworth Triem's book, Direct Healing (1922), is available on Google books, as are several of his stories for Boys' Life magazine. You can also read about Triem's character Mother Hansen in Robert Sampson's book, Yesterday's Faces, Volume 5: Dangerous Horizons (1991). Finally, you can read more about Eve Triem in the description of her papers held at the University of Washington Libraries.

Poet Eve Triem, wife of writer Paul Ellsworth Triem. This photograph, by Mary Randlett, was taken in September 1991, the year before Eve's death at age 90.

Justin Dewey Triem (1909-1991), son of pulp writer Paul Ellsworth Triem, was a comic book writer and artist during the Golden Age of Comics. The Marvel Family and Junior Miss were two of the titles on which he worked.

Paul Ellsworth Triem, from Direct Healing, 1916.

Updated on September 29, 2024. Thanks to Daryl Herrick for corrections, further information, and the link to the photograph of Triem.

Captions and text copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

W. Elwyn Backus (1892-1979)

Author, Horse Racing Tipster

Born March 7, 1892, Newport, Kentucky

Died December 31, 1979, Coral Gables, Florida

At a penny per word, writing pulp fiction was not likely to make an author his fortune. Max Brand and Walter B. Gibson were exceptions. More typical was an author like W. Elwyn Backus, who worked in paint, plumbing, and hardware while writing away for publishers of pamphlets, books, and magazines.

Waldo Elwyn "Bill" Backus was the son of a chemist and born in Newport, Kentucky, on March 7, 1892. He was educated in public schools in Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Even as a teenager, the young author was going by "W. Elwyn Backus," the name under which his stories for Weird Tales appeared. There were six in all, beginning with "The Hall Bedroom" in February 1924 and ending with "Subterranea" in November 1931. According to the website Science Fiction Citations, Backus' serial "The Waning of a World" is the first science fiction story in which the word porthole is used in relation to a spacecraft. Part four of that serial was voted by the readers of Weird Tales as the second most popular story in the February 1926 issue. "The Phantom Bus," from September 1930, has been reprinted several times, keeping Backus' name in print even after his death.

W. Elwyn Backus was born in "the land of colts, colonels, and corn," as Brick Bradford described Kentucky. It shouldn't come as any surprise that he was interested in horse racing. Backus co-authored a book called How to Select Winning Horses (1937). He also devised a sheet for bettors, the "Jockette Horse Racing Sheet." Backus lived in Kentucky and Cincinnati and retired as an advertising executive from the American Seating Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1958. Afterwards he satisfied a lifelong ambition to write a novel, but the book was never published. In retirement, Backus lived in Coral Gables, Florida, home of Tropical Park horse race track. He died in that city on the last day of the 1970s, December 31, 1979.

W. Elwyn Backus' Stories in Weird Tales

"The Hall Bedroom" (Feb. 1924)

"The Waning of a World" (four-part serial, Nov. 1925-Feb. 1926, reprinted in Aviation Stories and Mechanics, ca. 1933-1935)

"The Youth-Maker" (Apr. 1927)

"Behind the Moon" (three-part serial, Dec. 1929-Feb. 1930)

"The Phantom Bus" (Sept. 1930)

"Subterranea" (Nov. 1931)

Further Reading

"The Phantom Bus" in Terror at Night, edited by Herbert Williams (Avon, 1947); The Red Brain, edited by Dashiell Hammett (Four Square, 1965); and 100 Wild Little Weird Tales, edited by Robert Weinberg (Barnes and Noble, 1994)

W. Elwyn Backus' story, "The Phantom Bus," was reprinted in Terror at Night, an early paperback horror anthology from Avon Books. . .

. . . and again in The Red Brain, an anthology from 1965. This is a British edition of the book. Anyone who owns cats has seen an image like this one before.

"Jockette Horse Racing Sheet," devised by Weird Tales author W. Elwyn Backus.

Finally, a postcard from Tropical Park, Coral Gables, Florida, Backus' home (the city, not the racetrack) late in life and the place of his death.

Thanks to Randal A. Everts for further information on Waldo Elwyn Backus.
Text and captions copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Ronal Kayser (1905-1988)

Aka Dale Clark, Dale Clarke

Author

Born August 27, 1905, Springfield, Minnesota

Died February 22, 1988, San Diego County, California

Ronal (or Ronald) Sherwood Kayser was born on August 27, 1905, in Minnesota and lived in towns named after two of the state's ten thousand lakes. Graham Lake may have been his place of birth. At age twenty-five, he lived in Round Lake with his family and was already calling himself an author of magazine stories. Kayser married in 1930 and may have left home for Chicago at about the same time. In any case, he worked as an investigator for the Juvenile Protective Association (JPA), an agency set up by social worker Jane Addams in 1901. His position with JPA may explain why his first two stories for Weird Tales appeared under a pseudonym, Dale Clark. (A speculation on my part.) Those stories were published in early 1934. By the October issue, Kayser was writing under his own name.

Nineteen thirty-six was a good year for Ronal Kayser, at least when it came to Weird Tales. He had three stories and a poem printed in the magazine that year, beating his previous best of three stories printed in 1934. One from 1936, "In the Dark," was reprinted in 100 Wild Little Weird Tales (1994) and is now available as a download on the Internet. "In the Dark" was also Kayser's last story for "The Unique Magazine," although he sold other stories to Argosy and Terror Tales during the 1930s.

Weird fiction, though popular, had limited appeal during the pulp era, at least compared to crime fiction. Perhaps recognizing that and drawing on his experience as an investigator, Kayser began writing detective stories, some with a scientific angle, and again under his Dale Clark identity. Among his books were Focus on Murder (1943), The Red Rods (1946), Mambo to Murder (1955), and Country Coffin (1961). Kayser also wrote stories for Detective Story Magazine, Detective Fiction Weekly, and other magazines during this phase of his career. 

Kayser lived in La Jolla, California, during the 1940s and probably afterward. He died in San Diego County on February 22, 1988, but his fiction is still read and admired, in print and encoded in electrons.

Update (Feb. 20, 2022): I don't have many Golden Age comic books, but one I do have is Ibis the Invincible #2, from 1943. Inside is a text story called "If the Shoe Fits." The author was Dale Clark. So, it looks like we can add Ronal Kayser to the list of tellers of weird tales who also contributed to comic books.

Ronal Kayser's Stories, Poem, and Letter in Weird Tales

"The Phantom in the Sky" (Jan. 1934) as by Dale Clark

"Behind the Screen" (Apr. 1934) as by Dale Clark

"The White Prince" (Oct. 1934)

"The Albino Deaths" (Mar. 1936)
Letter to "The Eyrie" (May 1936)

"The Seance" (poem, Apr. 1936)

"The Unborn" (July 1936)

"In the Dark" (Aug./Sept. 1936)

Further Reading

You can read more about Kayser's detective stories on websites devoted to pulp fiction. A search with the keywords "Dale Clark" and "detective" will turn up plenty of material.

The Blonde, the Gangster, and the Private Eye was also titled The Red Rods (1946). I'm not sure if Lauren Bacall had anything to do with the story, but there she is on the cover, apparently in the role of a femme fatale.

Finally, the cover of A Run for the Money (1956) by Dale Clark, alias Ronal Kayser. Now the woman looks like Susan Hayward or Arlene Dahl. The man looks like he's gotten a run for his money.

Thanks to Randal A. Everts for locating Ronal Kayser's birth record.
Text and captions copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley