Frank Owen (1893-1968)

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

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

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

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

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

Their children:

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

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

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

Next: Frank Owen's Stories and Poems.

Original text copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Percy B. Prior (?-?)

Hobbyist, Author, Poet
Born ?
Died ?

Who was Percy B. Prior? Here's a start:

Percy B. Prior is an Australian writer from Sydney who is in close contact with the splendid work Rotary is doing there. (The Rotarian, Jan. 1931)

Was he the writer for Weird Tales? Well, he was interested in weird things:

Wanted snapshots of all kinds of strange, odd, or unique things, such as happenings, freaks of nature, old and historic scenes, birds and animals, etc. For these will exchange good quality postage stamps or city and beauty snapshots in return. Percy B. Prior. 15 Philpott Street. Marrickville. N.S.W. (The World's News, Nov. 28, 1928)

Maybe he was a kind of Charles Fort or Robert Ripley of the Land Down Under. So what did he write? Here's a partial list:

• "A Song of Thanksgiving" (1916)
• "It Pays To Hatch Early" (article) in American Poultry Journal (Mar. 1921)
• "A Serviceable Bench Stop" (article) in The Popular Science Monthly (Feb. 1922)
• "Getting the Garden Soil into Condition" (article) in Garden & Home Builder (1923)
• "To Our Flag" (poem) in The Newcastle Sun (Apr. 17, 1923)
• "Dreams of Youth" and "My 'El Dorado'" (poems) in The Newcastle Sun (May 8, 1923)
• "How to Photograph Moving Objects" (article) in Photo-Era (1924)
• "And--I Ain't Dead Yet" (poem), syndicated in newspapers in 1926
• "Why the Cake Fell" (article) in The Farmer's Wife (Sept. 1926)
• "Strange Farms" (article) in Complete Novel Magazine (Feb. 1927)
• "'Here Is My Heart'" (short story) in Sweetheart Stories (Feb. 28, 1928)
• "Canberra: Will It Become the Real Capital of Australia?" (article) in The Rotarian (Oct. 1928)
• "Useful Hints on Flashlight Photography for the Novice with a Camera" (article) in Camera Craft (1929)
• Four-part series on Australian Aborigines in The Afro-American (beginning July 6, 1929)
• "Concerning Ostrich Feathers" (article) in Wild West Stories and Complete Novel Magazine (Dec. 1929)
• "The Little Things" (item), syndicated in newspapers in 1930
• "Prison Cell Pets" (article), syndicated in newspapers in 1930
• "School for Horses" (article), syndicated in newspapers in 1930
• "The Wombat or Badger" (article), syndicated in newspapers in 1930
• "An Interesting Letter from Australia" (letter) in Popular Aviation (Sept. 1930)
• "Cat's Lifetime Spent in Church" (article), syndicated in newspapers in 1931
• "Every One Present at Indian Wedding but Bride Herself" (article), syndicated in newspapers in 1931
• "All About the Jellyfish" (article), syndicated in newspapers in 1932
• "Men and Their Dogs" (article), syndicated in newspapers in 1934, 1937 
• "Radio Around the World" (article) in The Rotarian (Apr. 1934)
• "Christmas Again" (poem), syndicated in newspapers in 1930; also in: Anniston Star (Dec. 21, 1943); West African Advent Messenger (Dec. 1959); Australasian Record and Advent World Survey (Dec. 12, 1960)
• "Sweetheart, You Are My Guiding Star"

Prior also had a good run in Weird Tales with three stories published in less than a year in 1927-1928. And he was a hobbyist, including being a philatelist and a photographer. And that's all I know about the man who may have been the only native Australian to contribute to Weird Tales.*

* * *

Update (Mar. 29, 2026): Some bullet points on Percy B. Prior:

• In the period 1924-1930, Percy B. Prior was in Sydney, Australia.

• A newspaper article from June 29, 1938, says that Prior was a past president Optimist International and lived in Los Angeles.

• In Invisible Horizons by Vincent Gaddis (1965), Percy B. Prior is described as an American ex-sailor who settled in Australia. Thanks to Groggy Dundee, comment below, for finding the reference. My copy of Invisible Horizons is in storage, so I can't check it. Vincent Gaddis was also a teller of weird tales and a Fortean author. He and Prior had those two things in common. I wonder if they knew each other.

Percy B. Prior's Stories in Weird Tales
"The El Dorado of Death" (July 1927)
"When the Dead Return" (Dec. 1927)
"The Tree-Man Ghost" (Mar. 1928)

Further Reading

"The Tree-Man Ghost" was reprinted in 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories edited by Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg (1993). It's a fine little tale and may very well have been based on a traditional Scottish ghost story.

*Update (May 13, 2023): Prior lived in Winnipeg, Canada, so he may have been a Canadian rather than an Australian.

Copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Walter G. Detrick (1884-1926) & Guy Detrick (1908 or 1910-1969)

Author, Schoolteacher, Principal, Superintendent

Born September 20, 1884, Reidsburg, Clarion County, Pennsylvania

Died April 16, 1926, Strattanville, Clarion County, Pennsylvania

Son of a blacksmith, Walter Guy Detrick was born on September 20, 1884, in Reidsburg, Clarion County, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Clarion State Normal School in 1908. In September 1918, when he filled out his draft card, Detrick was a tuberculosis patient at the Hamburg State Sanatorium in Strattanville, Pennsylvania. He had contracted the disease in about 1915.

Detrick married Janet L. Hughes in Manhattan on December 16, 1920. She died before him (of influenza, on April 18, 1922), as did a brother who had served in France during World War I. Detrick was a schoolteacher, principal, and superintendent, in Philadelphia and other places. Near the end of his life, he studied to be a nurse at Friend's Hospital in Philadelphia.

Detrick's obituary (Clarion Democrat, Apr. 22, 1926, p. 5) says that he was the author of a number of stories published in national magazines. I have taken the leap and assumed that he was a teller of weird tales who wrote three stories for "The Unique Magazine" published in 1925-1926. The last, "The Kidnapper's Hands," appeared in the February 1926 issue. Walter Guy Detrick, the Pennsylvania teacher, died of pulmonary tuberculosis two months later, on April 16, 1926, at his parents' home in Strattanville. He was just forty-one years old.

In updating this article (on April 17, 2022, the day after the anniversary of Walter Guy Detrick's death), I find that a Guy Detrick had five letters in Weird Tales and Astounding Stories of Super-Science in 1932-1935. So, in my mind, one of two things happened: 1) Those two magazines published Detrick's letters posthumously; or, more likely: 2) Guy Detrick was a different person . . .

And I find that The FictionMags Index has the solution to this little mystery, for it has Guy Carlton Detrick's hometown listed as Big Prairie, Ohio, and his dates as 1908-1969. Other online sources have a different birthdate, June 17, 1910 (in Big Prairie, Ohio), and a death date of December 23, 1969 (in Cleveland, Ohio). That Guy Detrick worked for the Associated Press in Columbus, Ohio, when he filled out his World War II draft card. There was possibly a second Guy Detrick, an educator and lecturer who had Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) among his students. But for now, I think we have Walter Guy Detrick and Guy C. Detrick figured out, and we should leave it at that until something new appears.

Walter G. Detrick's Stories in Weird Tales

"Through the Horn Gate" (Weird Tales, Apr. 1925)

"Dead Hands" (Weird Tales, June 1925)

"The Kidnapper's Story" (Weird Tales, Feb. 1926)

Guy C. Detrick's Letters in Weird Tales and Astounding Stories of Super-Science

Letter in "The Eyrie" (Weird Tales, July 1932)

Letter (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, Jan. 1933)

Letter in "The Eyrie" (Weird Tales, Jan. 1934)

Letter in "The Eyrie" (Weird Tales, Feb. 1934)

Letter in "The Eyrie" (Weird Tales, Nov. 1935)

Further Reading

None known.

Updated on April 17, 2022.

Copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

A. Merritt Art Gallery-The Pool of the Stone God

"The Pool of the Stone God" by A. Merritt

(as by W. Fenimore) in

 The American Weekly, Sept. 23, 1923

From 1912 until his death in 1943, Abraham Merritt was on the staff of The American Weekly, a Sunday magazine inserted into the newspapers of the Hearst chain. In 1923, Merritt's story "The Pool of the Stone God" was published in The American Weekly. It might have been unseemly for a staff member to have his story published under his own name, thus Merritt used a pseudonym, W. Fenimore. At least I think that's the reason. A source on the Internet says (without attribution or citation) that the name is derived from James Fenimore Cooper from whom Merritt was supposedly descended.

"The Pool of the Stone God" is a very brief story designed for quick reading on a Sunday afternoon. According to Sam Moskowitz, the story is not definitely Merritt's. After reading through issue after issue of The American Weekly, the bibliographer George Wetzel (1921-1983) came to the conclusion that it was indeed the work of Abraham Merritt, and everyone after him seems to have accepted that. See Moskowitz's introduction to the story in Horrors Unknown (1972) for more on that topic.

I don't have an image for the issue in which "The Pool of the Stone God" appeared, September 23, 1923. Instead, here is an issue from two months later, November 25, 1923. This image doesn't really give you an idea of the scale of the thing, but The American Weekly was large, approximately 15 by 21 inches or about tabloid-size. The cover artist was C.D. Mitchell. You can see more covers at the following URL:

http://www.bpib.com/illustra2/various2.htm

and on a very good blog called Stripper's Guide, conducted by the comic strip historian Allan Holtz. 

"The Pool of the Stone God" was reprinted in Horrors Unknown, an anthology edited by Sam Moskowitz and published in three editions in the early 1970s. According to The FictionMags Index, it was also reprinted in this issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, dated February 1988. I don't know the name of the cover artist.

Captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Ida M. Kier (1879-1963)

Author, Poet, Cashier
Born July 1, 1879, Marshall County, Indiana
Died June 13, 1963, King City, Missouri

Ida Mae (or May) Bosworth was born on July 1, 1879, in Marshall County, Indiana, to Parmenus Bosworth and his second wife, Arrilla E. Pittsenbarger Allen Bosworth. In about 1888, Mr. Bosworth took his family by covered wagon to King City in Gentry County, Missouri. According to a contributor called NMF on the website Find A Grave, he returned with his son to Marshall County, leaving his wife and daughters behind. King City was a fairly young city even then. It had been settled in 1856 by John Pittsenbarger. I assume that Armilla E. Pittsenbarger Allen Bosworth and John Pittsenbarger were related somehow, and that's how Ida Mae Bosworth became a Missourian.

Ida M. Bosworth married John Walker Young Kier (1867-1944), probably around the turn of the century or shortly thereafter. They had three children, Thelma, Dale, and Dwight. The Kier family lived in Missouri during the early part of the twentieth century. In 1940, Ida was enumerated in Hastings, Nebraska, with her daughter Thelma. "Mrs. Kier's remarkable life," wrote the Gentry County News, "was a lesson in pluck and perseverance to all who knew her. She had been crippled since babyhood [with poliomyelitis]. She went through grade school and high school here on a crutch, and for years she was a cashier of the old Levy & Mayer Merc. Co. here. She married and reared a fine family and, confined to her home and wheel-chair, became a prolific writer of magazine stories and verse, using her earnings to support and educate her three children."

Ida Kier's mother, Arrilla Bosworth, died on June 4, 1917. Not long afterwards, Ida sold her first story, "Gift of the Lightning," to The People's Home Journal. The story was also syndicated in national newspapers. Over the next decade or so, Ida wrote for other magazines, including Blue Moon, Comfort, Cupid's Diary, Holland's, The Home Friend, Love Romances, Love Story Magazine, Table Talk, Telling Tales, Youth's Companion, and a number of Sunday school papers such as Christian Herald and New-Church Messenger. Her poem, "My Mottoes," proved very popular and was reprinted in several magazines, including The Bridgeman's Magazine, Railroad Telegrapher, and Machinist's Monthly Journal. It begins with mention of the poet's mother.

In 1921, Ida wrote something about herself and how she composed her stories in an article called "Contemporary Writers and Their Work: A Series of Autobiographical Letters." (In The Editor, Mar. 18, 1921, pp. 25-27, accessible by clicking here.) "I prefer to write," she explained, "and believe I can do my best work, on dreary days or wild stormy nights." Dreary days and stormy nights may have suited her moods. Moreover, they may have symbolized in some way the events of her life and career, the latter of which began at about the time her mother died and nearly came to an end ten years later when a horrible tragedy befell her family.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that American literature is not easily separable from Gothicism. That literature of course has grown out of the American experience. Since colonial days it has often elided into fantasy and weird fiction. In any event, a Gothic kind of violence entered the life of Ida M. Kier on November 11, 1927, when her half-brother, Henry Peter Allen, murdered his wife and son at their Gentry County farm before killing himself. I wonder if Ida's encounter with madness and violence had any bearing on her writing. Whatever its effect, two of Ida's last published works (according to The FictionMags Index) came in January 1928, just two months after the murders. Presumably they had been accepted for publication before the tragedy. The last (or presumably the last), her short story "Together" for Weird Tales, was published more than seven years later, in June 1935.

Ida M. Kier died on June 13, 1963, in King City, Missouri, at age eighty-three. She was buried in King City Cemetery.

Ida M. Kier's Story in Weird Tales

"Together" (June 1935)

Further Reading

None known.

Cupid's Diary for February 10, 1926 (No. 81), the last issue before St. Valentine's Day that year. Ida M. Kier's novel, Romance Comes to the Wilderness, appeared in this issue. The cover is beautifully done. Unfortunately we don't know the name of the artist. 

Text and captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

A. Merritt Art Gallery-The Metal Monster

"The Metal Monster" by A. Merritt in
Argosy All-Story Weekly,
August 7-September 25, 1920

In 1920, Argosy merged with All-Story Weekly to become Argosy All-Story Weekly. "The Metal Monster," an eight-part serial, was A. Merritt's first cover story for the newly-named magazine and his second overall. The cover artist, Glen White, was the first to depict the blonde Norhala and the geometric forms of her domain.

"The Metal Monster" was serialized a second time in a Gernsback magazine, Science and Invention, from October 1927 to August 1928. (There were eleven parts in all.) The story was revised somewhat and retitled "The Metal Emperor." Unfortunately, I don't have any images from that first reprinting. Instead, here is the cover for Famous Fantastic Mysteries Combined with Fantastic Novels Magazine, August 1941, which included the complete story under its original title. The artist was Virgil Finlay. This is the first of four covers showing Norhala with her arms raised. 

Avon Murder Mystery Monthly reprinted the story as a complete book in 1945. This was #41 in the series. The cover was by Paul Stahr (1883-1953), who had originally illustrated stories for Argosy All-Story Weekly. According to The Internet Speculative Fiction Database, this was Stahr's last published work of fantasy or science fiction.

Avon reprinted The Metal Monster again in 1951 with a cover by an unknown artist . . .

And a third time in 1957. The illustrator was Richard Powers (1921-1996).

A French publisher, Hachette, also issued an edition in 1957. The title is Le Monstre de Métal, and it was #50 in the series Le Rayon Fantastique. The artist is unknown.

Doug Rosa (1932-1976) created the cover illustration for the 1966 Avon edition . . .

Which was reused in the 1972 edition.

In the early 1970s, Hyperion Press put out a series called Classics of Science Fiction with a logo that looks like it came out of ancient Greece. The Metal Monster, from 1974, was one entry in the series.

Finally, Avon once again reissued the book in 1976 with a new cover illustration by Stephen Fabian (b. 1930).

Captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

A. Merritt Art Gallery-Three Lines of Old French

"Three Lines of Old French" by A. Merritt in

All-Story Weekly, August 9, 1919

"Three Lines of Old French" is another of A. Merritt's fantasies about crossing over or passing through boundaries. It is an unusual story in that it is set in France during the Great War, which had ended not even a year before the story was published. I don't know of very many tales of fantasy, science fiction, or weird fiction that are set during the war and on the front lines. Maybe the war was too horrible to treat it in what many would consider non-serious genres of fiction. The cover story is "The Curse of Capistrano" by Johnson McCully. The cover art is unsigned and the artist is unknown.

"Three Lines of Old French" is too short for publication as a novel. Nonetheless, it took up all of one volume in a short-lived series called Bizarre. This is the cover of Bizarre #1 from 1937. 

The story was reprinted again in Famous Fantastic Mysteries for May-June 1940. The artist was Frank R. Paul.

The interior art was by Virgil Finlay. You might remember this image from my article called "Weird Tales and World War I" dated November 11, 2011, here.

In Observance of Memorial Day.

Captions copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley