Grace Keon (1873-1952)

Pseudonym of Mary Grace Wallace Doonan
Aka G.K. Doonan, Mary Wallace
Author, Poet, Playwright, Editor, Proofreader, Catholic Missionary
Born October 24, 1873, Manhattan, New York
Died October 29, 1952, West Shokan, New York

Grace Keon was a pseudonym of Mary Grace Wallace Doonan, an American author born on October 24, 1873, in New York City to Irish-American parents. Her father was William Wallace, a driver; her mother was Ann Keon, from whom Grace derived her nom de plume. Grace Keon was also known as G.K. Doonan and Mary Wallace.

Mary Grace worked as a proofreader early in life and became a published author as early as 1904 with her book The Ruler of the Kingdom and Other Phases of Life and Character. She followed that with Not a Judgment (1906) and The Life on Earth of Our Blessed Lord, Told in Rhyme, Story and Picture for Little Catholic Children (1913). Grace Keon specialized in Catholic literature and had several stories published in Catholic World and Extension Magazine from 1915 to 1933. Her other works included The Ruby Cross (a mystery, 1917), The Tiger of the Desert (a play, 1917), Just Happy: The Story of a Dog--and Some Humans (1920), Broken Paths (1923), The High Road (1930), Stars in My Heaven (1941), The Story of Doctor King (1944), and Love Is Strong (date unknown). She was associated for many years with the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.

Grace Keon did not contribute to Weird Tales. However, she wrote three stories for Oriental Stories/The Magic Carpet Magazine in 1932-1933. Her first, "The Dance of Yesha," was reprinted in The Daily Mail on October 12, 1935.

Mary Grace was married to James Francis Doonan, who worked for P.J. Kennedy & Sons of Manhattan, a Catholic publishing house. Doonan's obituary called him "one of the foremost authorities on Catholic literature in the United States." Born in 1868, James F. Doonan died in 1934 in Queens, New York. He was survived by his wife and their six sons.

Mary Grace Doonan lived in Corona, New York, for thirty-seven years, then ten more years in West Shokan. She died at her home in West Shokan on October 29, 1953, five days after her seventy-ninth birthday. She lies buried in Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, Queens, alongside her husband.

Grace Keon's Stories in Oriental Stories/The Magic Carpet Magazine
"The Dance of Yesha" in Oriental Stories (Winter 1932)
"The Maid of Mir" in The Magic Carpet Magazine (Jan. 1933)
"The Gardens of the Nawwab" in The Magic Carpet Magazine (Apr. 1933)

Further Reading
Listing for Mary Grace "Grace Keon" Wallace Doonan on Find A Grave, here.
Listing for her husband, James Francis Doonan, on Find A Grave, here.

Updated August 2, 2017.
Thanks to John Herrington for locating the Find A Grave listing for Grace Keon.
Text and captions copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Josie McNamara Lydon (1865-1948)

Poet, Lyricist

Born September 7, 1865, Canada

Died March 12, 1948, Los Angeles, California

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

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

Josie McNamara Lydon's Poem in Weird Tales

"White Lilies" (Dec. 1927)

Further Reading

None known.

Text copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Charles Christopher Jenkins (1882-1943)

Journalist, Editor, Author
Born September 17, 1882, Hamilton, Wentworth, Ontario, Canada
Died November 18, 1943, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Charles Christopher Jenkins was born on September 17, 1882, in Hamilton, Ontario. At the time of his wedding in 1908, Jenkins was working as city editor of the Chatham Daily Planet. In the early 1920s (perhaps when the Planet ceased publication in 1922), he moved on to the general interest magazine Maclean's, based in Toronto, and from there to the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper. In addition to his journalistic work, Jenkins wrote fiction. A list of his stories from The FictionMags Index:

• "The Yap" with Epes Winthrop Sargent in The All-Story (June 1912)
• "King of the Trails" in Top-Notch (Apr. 15, 1919)
• "The Traitor Within" in Argosy (Oct. 4, 1919)
• "The Man Beneath" in Argosy (Oct. 25, 1919)
• "The Bayonet of Henry Laberge" in Argosy (Feb. 21, 1920)
• "A Triangle in Sacks" in Maclean’s (Aug. 15, 1927)

Charles C. Jenkins also wrote a novel, The Timber Pirate, published in 1922. He dedicated that book to his wife, Edith Goldworth Eberts (1882-1975), a descendant of Hermann Melchior Eberts (1753-1819), who was himself descended from Austrian nobility. Jenkins wrote one story for Weird Tales, "The Luster of the Beast," from March 1926. He died on November 18, 1943, in Toronto.

Charles Christopher Jenkins' Story in Weird Tales

"The Luster of the Beast" (Mar. 1926)

Further Reading

You can see Jenkins' family tree at this URL:

http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/n/e/l/Joyce--M-Nelson/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0043.html

From there, you can follow a link to a poorly formatted account of the life of Jenkins' wife. That account includes some information on Jenkins and his career.

An undated newspaper photograph of Charles Christopher Jenkins broadcasting on CFRB, a Toronto radio station that started operations in 1927.

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Welcome, Readers of Weird Tales

Weird Tales, the magazine that never dies, is still in existence and has recently published two new issues under its new editor, Marvin Kaye. Weird Tales has a website, an innovation that would have been inconceivable ninety-one years ago when the magazine began. I have begun as a guest blogger on that website. My first article, "They Should Have Been in Weird Tales," began yesterday. You can read it at this URL:

http://weirdtalesmagazine.com/

"They Should Have Been in Weird Tales" is a three-part article introducing the writers that Jacob Clark Henneberger hoped to have in his magazine but who never contributed to Weird Tales. I have written about Hamlin Garland first. Articles about Emerson Hough and Ben Hecht will follow. Eventually, all the articles I write for the Weird Tales website will show up here. In the meantime, you can follow the link. And for readers who are arriving here from the Weird Tales website, Welcome, and Happy Reading.

Copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Andre Linville (1888-1954)

Pseudonym of André Marie L'Heureux
Author, Journalist, Editor
Born October 20, 1888, Paris, France
Died October 10, 1954, Paris, France

I know very little of André Linville, and what I write here comes from several different sources, most of which are in French. I hope that what I write is correct. Maybe a French reader of this posting can offer something more.

André Linville was the nom de plume of André Marie L'Heureux, a French author, journalist, and editor born on October 20, 1888, in Paris, France. Under that nom de plume, L'Heureux coauthored a book called La Boxe, traité pratique et complet with Jacques Mortane (1883-1939), published in 1908.

In 1914, an utterly disastrous war came to Europe. Like his countrymen, Linville played his part, although I can't say for sure that he was a combatant. In 1916, however, he founded and became editor of a publication called in some sources Journal des Combattants et des mutilés, a title that I translate as Journal of Combatants and the Mutilated. It was later called Journal des Fighters. Linville directed the magazine until his death.

I believe Linville ran for political office after the war. He was instrumental in the enacting of a law from 1919 that led to a later Pension Code in France. He also created a patriotic association called Flamme de la Nation in 1934. It was probably not by coincidence that Adolf Hitler had risen to power in Germany in the previous year.

In 1935, Editions Chantel of Paris issued André Linville's collection La Dernière traversée et autres récits (The Last Crossing and Other Stories). There are seven stories in the collection. The title story is the same as one called "The Last Voyage," which was published in English in The Grand Magazine in August 1917. The last story in La Dernière traversée et autres récits is called "T.S.F." That story was translated and reprinted in Weird Tales as "Dead Man's Schooner" in December 1939, only three months after Europe had once again gone to war.

Following is a list of the contents of La Dernière traversée et autres récits, as well as further information on the book and its stories. This information is from a website called Le Visage Vert: Littérature fantastique, accessible by clicking here. I have slightly altered the formatting from the original. The translations in brackets are my own.

La Dernière traversée et autres récits (Paris: Editions Chantel, 1935 [juillet]), 253 p.

[Summary]:

"La Dernière traversée" ["The Last Crossing"]

"L'Oiseau sans ailes" ["The Bird without Wings"]
"Une minute de plus" ["One More Minute"]
"Le Raid de Jacques Fromental" ["The Raid of Jacques Fromental"]
"Le 7 mai 1915" ["May 7, 1915"--the date of the sinking of the Lusitania]
"Le Mystère du Philippe-Grandier" ["The Mystery of Philippe-Grandier"]
"T.S.F."

Deux présentations, 1 avec couv. ill., l'autre sans. EO: 50 ex. sur vélin pur fil des papéteries d'Arches ntés de 1 à 50 et 300 ex. sur Alfa Prioux ntés de 51 à 350.

[Stories]:

"La Dernière traversée"
— in Lecture pour Tous, 15 mars 1917, p. 826-837, ill. R. Wallace.
— in [Linville] La Dernière traversée et autres récits (Paris: Editions Chantel, 1935).

"L'Oiseau sans ailes"
— in Lecture pour Tous, août 1921, p. 1481-1488, ill. Lanos
— in [Linville] La Dernière traversée et autres récits (Paris: Editions Chantel, 1935).

"T.S.F."
— in [Linville] La Dernière traversée et autres récits (Paris: Editions Chantel, 1935), p. 241-253.
— in Weird Tales, décembre 1939, sous le titre «Dead Man's Schooner».

— in Jour de l'an chez les momies & autres contes surnaturels et de merveilleux scientifique (Élancourt: Le Visage Vert), mars 1987, p. 31-33. Présentation et bibliographie p. ii.

[End of summary.]

Lecture pour Tous was a French magazine in print from the late 1800s until 1940.

Updates:

Pierre-François Toulze has kindly provided André Linville's year of death, 1954. See his comment below. Thank you, M. Toulze. Update (Dec. 5, 2021): Randal A. Everts has provided the exact date, October 10, 1954, making Linville at his death sixty-five years old. Thank you, RAE.

André Linville's Story in Weird Tales

"Dead Man's Schooner" (Dec. 1939)

Further Reading

If you search the Internet, you're likely to find the same sources I have found. Even the French version of Wikipedia seems to be lacking in information on Linville. Here is a link to a death notice for André Linville from a French newspaper, Le lien, from November 1954:

https://argonnaute.parisnanterre.fr/medias/customer_3/periodique/Stalag/FP_RES_408b/PDF/BDIC_FPR_00408_1954_077.pdf

Thanks to RAE for finding this source.

A photograph of the author, editor, and journalist André Linville. The caption for the photo reads: "[Portrait de] M. [André] Linville [candidat aux élections législatives sur la liste Union des gauches et des anciens combattants de Seine et Oise]: [photographie de presse]/[Agence Rol]." Translation: "[Portrait of] Mr. [André] Linville [parliamentary candidate on the ticket of the Union of the Left and Veterans of the Seine and Oise]: [press photograph]/[Agence Rol]." I have modified the Google translation and hope I have done it correctly. Linville's membership in the Veterans of the Seine and Oise suggests that he was in fact a combatant during World War I, or at least that he had been in uniform.

Thanks to Le Visage Vert: Littérature fantastique for providing the information. Thanks also to Pierre-François Toulze and Randal A. Everts for further information.
Original text and captions copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

E. Irvine Haines (1877-1959)

Edwin Irvine Haines
Editor, Author, Historian, Correspondent, Businessman
Born October 21, 1877, New York
Died August 1959, Pinellas County, Florida

Edwin Irvine Haines was born on October 21, 1877, in New York, probably in New York City. He was an editor of newspapers and magazines and an author of feature articles, stories, a play, and a novel. Haines also wrote lengthy letters to several publications, including the New York Times. He specialized in the history of Colonial times and the American Revolution and was a member of the American Scenic, Historic and Preservation Society. In the 1930s, Haines authored a series of historical articles for The New York Times Magazine. His research culminated in a play, Peggy Shippen: A Drama of the American Revolution in Three Acts (1935), moreover in a well received historical novel, The Exquisite Siren: The Romance of Peggy Shippen and Major John Andre, published in 1938. Haines contributed stories, articles, and letters of comment to a number of magazines, including All-Story Weekly, American Banker, Coronet, The Editor, Ghost Stories, Mill Supplies, The Mining American, San Francisco Call, Soldiers of Fortune, Weird Tales, and Woman's Home Companion. His pulp magazine credits are short enough to list here. This list may or may not be complete:

• Letter in All-Story Weekly (July 3, 1920)
• "Is Bear Mountain Haunted?" in Ghost Stories (July 1931)
• "The Spy of the Neutral Ground" in Soldiers of Fortune (May 1932)
• Plus his letters and story for Weird Tales, listed below

Early in his career, Haines was the editor of American Banker. In 1909 he took a position with the C.O. Burns Company, a manufacturer of coin banks and home safes. Haines later worked for Burnet L. Clark, editor of El Comercio, a newspaper on Latin American trade. Haines' wife was Ruth M. Haines, a librarian. Haines lived in New Rochelle, Manhattan, and Queens Village, New York. He died in August 1959 in Pinellas County, Florida, at age eighty-one.

E. Irvine Haines' Story and Letters in Weird Tales

"The Hand of the Invisible" (May 1928)

Letters to "The Eyrie"

May 1929

Feb. 1932

Mar. 1932

Feb. 1933

Oct. 1933

Apr. 1934

Further Reading

There are tidbits on E. Irvine Haines on the Internet, mostly to do with his book, The Exquisite Siren.

Ghost Stories, July 1931, with the title of E. Irvine Haines' story but without his byline on the cover. 

Haines had a story or article in this issue of Soldiers of Fortune (May 1932) but no credit on the cover. I thought I would show it anyway because of a nicely done cover illustration and because I had never before heard of this magazine. By the way, Lawrence D'Orsay and Victor Rousseau also contributed to Weird Tales. 

An illustration for a "true" ghost story by E. Irvine Haines published in the San Francisco Call, March 1, 1908. The illustration is signed, but I can't read the signature.

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Fire and Rain

I have been keeping track of weird news stories. My contention is that life is essentially weird. And the weird stuff that actually happens is sometimes weirder than what you would read in a story. I also wrote the other day about this question: Is science fiction dying? One possible answer: How can science fiction be dying when we quite obviously live in a science fiction world? (I know I answered a question with a question, but that comes naturally to the Irish.) Unfortunately, the science fiction world in which we live is too often a dystopia. A case in point: this week, a news story came out reporting that British hospitals have incinerated aborted and miscarried fetuses, in part to help heat their buildings. We all knew we were headed in this direction, but I didn't think it would happen so soon. Writers of science fiction and fantasy have anticipated developments like this, of course. It's equal parts "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift and Soylent Green, based on Harry Harrison's novel. It reminds me also of a cartoon by Andy Singer from his syndicated comic panel, No Exit, in which a man dashes through the background at a filling station shouting, "Soylent gas is made of people," while in the foreground, a man, who is gassing up his car, says, without even turning around, "Yeah, so what."

So the story comes out about human fetuses being burned for heat, and the world says, "So what." I suppose such a thing is acceptable, even desirable, in our science fiction world. You might think at first that it would be unacceptable inasmuch as it contributes to global warming. We should all realize however that it is acceptable to burn human fetuses for heat because they have not yet reached the threshold of carbon neutrality. In other words, they are carbon negative, so burn, baby, burn. Disposing of them in any way is also acceptable because then we can help head off the sin of overpopulation, or in the words of Ebenezer Scrooge, "decrease the surplus population." Great! A twofer!

There was record flooding in Great Britain this winter. That story came out first, so we can't place the two in a relationship of cause and effect. In any case, the last time we did stuff like this, the rains came and washed everything away--except Noah and the animals. So the British who endured inundation this winter get to relive it in a new science fiction movie called Noah. I know that the story of Noah and the flood comes from the Bible, but the movie bears little resemblance to that book. It is in no way biblical. Yeah, there is Noah and his family and a big boat full of animals and a worldwide flood, but otherwise Noah is on its own--pure Hollywood, if not Wormwood. Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly reprise their roles from A Beautiful Mind, only, instead of seeing mathematical equations in the sky, Noah sees visions of doom (some of which are drug-induced). She's still the devoted wife of a man who's trying to discover the meaning of existence. (She did the same thing as Charles Darwin's wife in Creation.) Anthony Hopkins plays Gandalf/Hannibal Lecter/Timothy Leary, but in this movie, he trades a taste for entrails for an obsession with red berries (no doubt slang for his favorite recreational drug). Oh, and there are Transformers, too.

I can only assume that Noah is set in a dystopian future with some elements of an imagined past, a sort of Lord of the Rings meets Mad Max. Humanity once again gets wiped out for its wickedness, but there doesn't seem to be much wickedness going on except for eating of cute little animals. And for being a bunch of hungry people, they sure look well fed. Maybe they have been drinking too many Big Gulp sodas. In any case, the suggestion seems to be that it has all come about because of that pesky global warming and overpopulation, you know, the only two sins left in the world. (I guess you can add a third when Tubal-Cain, the Bob Hoskins character, partakes of some salamander sushi, thereby rendering a species extinct.) In the end, everybody learns a lesson, Noah puts his drunkenness behind him through a twelve-step program, and the world goes on. So I wouldn't lose any sleep over Noah. But before you turn in, make sure you turn off your carbon-neutral, fetus-powered, non-incandescent electric light, and if necessary, take a red berry for a nice, dreamless sleep.

Copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley