Henry Everett McNeil

Last updated

Henry Everett McNeil (1862 - December 1929) was a leading children's author of the 1910s and 1920s, and was an original and core member of the Kalem Club circle around the writer H. P. Lovecraft. McNeil played a crucial role in the career of H.P. Lovecraft, in that he was the first to urge Lovecraft to submit his fiction to Weird Tales magazine in the early 1920s. [1]

The Kalem Club was a literary circle in New York that formed around the American fantasy writer H. P. Lovecraft from 1924–1927. It gained its name because the surnames of the original members all began with K, L or M.

H. P. Lovecraft American author

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American writer who achieved posthumous fame through his influential works of horror fiction. He was virtually unknown during his lifetime and published only in pulp magazines before he died in poverty, but he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors of horror and weird fiction.

<i>Weird Tales</i> US pulp fantasy magazine

Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. C. Henneberger and J. M. Lansinger in late 1922. The first issue, dated March 1923, appeared on newsstands February 18. The first editor, Edwin Baird, printed early work by H. P. Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn, and Clark Ashton Smith, all of whom would go on to be popular writers, but within a year the magazine was in financial trouble. Henneberger sold his interest in the publisher, Rural Publishing Corporation, to Lansinger and refinanced Weird Tales, with Farnsworth Wright as the new editor. The first issue under Wright's control was dated November 1924. The magazine was more successful under Wright, and despite occasional financial setbacks it prospered over the next fifteen years. Under Wright's control the magazine lived up to its subtitle, "The Unique Magazine", and published a wide range of unusual fiction.

Contents

Biography

McNeil's fiction was published under the name 'Everett McNeil' and consisted of boys' adventure books and stories for magazines such as Boys' Life . His tales were historical in setting, often featuring immense wild landscapes, and were "addressed to boys, written for boys" without any moralistic preaching or many political details. In book form his fiction appears to have retained a popularity from the 1900s into the 1950s, when it went out of fashion. Three of his books form a trilogy: The Hermit of the Culebra Mountains (1904); The Lost Treasure Cave (1905); and The Lost Nation (1918). Most of his novels were published by E.P. Dutton. McNeil also wrote short stories and magazine articles, and occasional humorous poetry.

<i>Boys Life</i> American magazine

Boys' Life is the monthly magazine of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). Its target readers are between the ages of 6 and 18. The magazine headquarters are in Irving, Texas.

He had a short career in the early cinema in New York from 1912-1917, as a scriptwriter, including as writer on major features such as The Martyrdom of Philip Strong (1916) and The Making Over of Geoffrey Manning (1915). His July 1911 article in Moving Picture World titled "How To Write A Photoplay" suggests he was also writing for the movies prior to 1912.

<i>The Moving Picture World</i> History of The Moving Picture World magazine

The Moving Picture World was an influential early trade journal for the American film industry, from 1907 to 1927. An industry powerhouse at its height, Moving Picture World frequently reiterated its independence from the film studios.

McNeil was born in 1862 in Stoughton, Wisconsin and attended Milton College. He walked from Wisconsin to New York City sometime before 1914, where he lived at 11 Bank Street in Old Greenwich Village, New York City. McNeil never married, and moved in bohemian and artistic circles in New York. Despite the relative success of his regularly published books, which he wrote at the steady rate of 200 words a day, he appears to have led a life of genteel and ever-declining poverty. By the mid-1920s he was rooming in the notorious Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan area of New York, where his rooms became the early core of the Kalem Club. He died in 1929 shortly after ill health caused him to move in with his sister in Tahoma, Washington, and when his books were starting to bring in more money than before. He was listed in Who's Who in America.

Stoughton, Wisconsin City in Wisconsin, United States

Stoughton is a city in Dane County, Wisconsin, United States. It straddles the Yahara River about 20 miles southeast of the state capital, Madison. Stoughton is part of the Madison Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2010 census, the population was 12,611.

Milton College

Milton College was a private college located in Milton, Wisconsin. Founded in 1844 as the Milton Academy, it closed in 1982. Its campus is now part of the Milton Historic District.

Greenwich Village Neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City

Greenwich Village often referred to by locals as simply "the Village", is a neighborhood on the west side of Manhattan, New York City, within Lower Manhattan. Broadly, Greenwich Village is bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village also contains several subsections, including the West Village west of Seventh Avenue and the Meatpacking District in the northwest corner of Greenwich Village.

H.P. Lovecraft was a loyal friend of his, especially liking McNeil for his freshness and his "childlike naivete". Lovecraft's "The Pigeon-Flyers", part of his late weird sonnet cycle "Fungi from Yuggoth", was inspired by McNeil's death. McNeil also appears as Dr. McNeil in "The Curse of Yig", where he is fictionalised as the curator of an insane asylum.

<i>Fungi from Yuggoth</i>

Fungi from Yuggoth is a sequence of 36 sonnets by cosmic horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Most of the sonnets were written between 27 December 1929 – 4 January 1930; thereafter individual sonnets appeared in Weird Tales and other genre magazines. The sequence was published complete in Beyond the Wall of Sleep and The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft. Ballantine Books’ mass paperback edition, Fungi From Yuggoth & Other Poems included other poetic works.

The Curse of Yig short story by H. P. Lovecraft

"The Curse of Yig" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop in which Yig, "The Father of Serpents", is first introduced.

As of 2011 his works are now in the public domain.

Bibliography

Further reading

Related Research Articles

August Derleth American novelist, short story writer, poet, editor, and anthologist

August William Derleth was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first book publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, and for his own contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos and the Cosmic Horror genre, as well as his founding of the publisher Arkham House, Derleth was a leading American regional writer of his day, as well as prolific in several other genres, including historical fiction, poetry, detective fiction, science fiction, and biography.

Arkham House is an American publishing house specializing in weird fiction. It was founded in Sauk City, Wisconsin in 1939 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to preserve in hardcover the best fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. The company's name is derived from Lovecraft's fictional New England city, Arkham. Arkham House editions are noted for the quality of their printing and binding. The colophon for Arkham House was designed by Frank Utpatel.

Robert W. Chambers American artist, novelist, short story writer

Robert William Chambers was an American artist and fiction writer, best known for his book of short stories titled The King in Yellow, published in 1895.

Carl Richard Jacobi American writer

Carl Richard Jacobi was an American journalist and author. He wrote short stories in the horror and fantasy genres for the pulp magazine market, appearing in such pulps of the bizarre and uncanny as Thrilling, Ghost Stories, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories and Strange Stories. He also wrote stories crime and adventure which appeared in such pulps as Thrilling Adventures, Complete Stories, Top-Notch, Short Stories, The Skipper, Doc Savage and Dime Adventures Magazine. He also produced some science fiction, mainly space opera, published in such magazines as Planet Stories. He was one of the last surviving pulp-fictioneers to have contributed to the legendary American horror magazine Weird Tales during its "glory days". His stories have been translated into French, Swedish, Danish and Dutch.

This is a complete list of works by H. P. Lovecraft. Dates for the fiction, collaborations and juvenilia are in the format: composition date / first publication date, taken from An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia by S. T. Joshi and D. E. Schultz, Hippocampus Press, New York, 2001. For other sections, dates are the time of composition, not publication. Many of these works can be found on Wikisource.

Frank Belknap Long American novelist, short story writer, poet

Frank Belknap Long was an American writer of horror fiction, fantasy, science fiction, poetry, gothic romance, comic books, and non-fiction. Though his writing career spanned seven decades, he is best known for his horror and science fiction short stories, including early contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos. During his life, Long received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award (1977).

S. T. Joshi American writer

Sunand Tryambak Joshi, known as S. T. Joshi, is an American literary critic, novelist, and a leading figure in the study of H. P. Lovecraft and other authors of weird and fantastic fiction. Besides having written what critics such as Harold Bloom and Joyce Carol Oates consider to be the definitive biography of Lovecraft, I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft, Joshi has prepared several annotated editions of works by Ambrose Bierce. He has also written on crime novelist John Dickson Carr and on Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood and M. R. James, and has edited collections of their works, as well as collections of the best work of numerous other weird writers.

Hippocampus Press is an American publisher of fantasy, horror and science fiction, and specializes in "the works of H. P. Lovecraft and his literary circle." As of 2017, it has issued over 200 publications, including editions of the complete fiction, essays, and poetry of Lovecraft, and thirteen volumes in the ongoing series of Lovecraft's Collected Letters.

Donald Wandrei American writer

Donald Albert Wandrei was an American science fiction, fantasy and weird fiction writer, poet and editor. He was the older brother of science fiction writer and artist Howard Wandrei. He had fourteen stories in Weird Tales, another sixteen in Astounding Stories, plus a few in other magazines including Esquire. He was the co-founder of the prestigious fantasy/horror publishing house Arkham House.

Farnsworth Wright was the editor of the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the magazine's heyday, editing 179 issues from November 1924-March 1940. Jack Williamson called Wright "the first great fantasy editor".

"The Rats in the Walls" is a short story by American author H. P. Lovecraft. Written in August–September 1923, it was first published in Weird Tales, March 1924.

"The Horror at Red Hook" is a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written on August 1–2, 1925, it was first published in the January 1927 issue of Weird Tales.

E. Hoffmann Price American writer

Edgar Hoffmann Price was an American writer of popular fiction for the pulp magazine marketplace. He collaborated with H. P. Lovecraft on "Through the Gates of the Silver Key".

Peter H. Cannon is an H. P. Lovecraft scholar and an author of Cthulhu Mythos fiction. Cannon works as an editor for Publishers Weekly, specializing in thrillers and mystery. He lives in New York City and is married with three children.

Henry S. Whitehead American writer

Henry St. Clair Whitehead was an Episcopal minister and author of horror fiction and fantasy

Samuel E. Loveman was an American poet, critic, and dramatist probably best known for his connections with writers H.P. Lovecraft and Hart Crane.

Whipple Van Buren Phillips American businessman

Whipple Van Buren Phillips was an American businessman from Providence, Rhode Island who also had mining interests in Idaho. He was most notable as the grandfather of H. P. Lovecraft, whom he raised with his daughters and encouraged to have an appreciation of literature, especially classical literature and English poetry.

References

  1. ↑ "McNeil tipped me too to that Weird Stories thing, which he says is published out of Chi[cago], but I ain't saw it yet. I'll tip it a wink the next time I lamp [see] a news stand." -- Lovecraft letter to Morton, 29 March 1923, in Letters to James F. Morton, Hippocampus Press 2011.
Project Gutenberg volunteer effort to digitize and archive books

Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books. The project tries to make these as free as possible, in long-lasting, open formats that can be used on almost any computer. As of 23 June 2018, Project Gutenberg reached 57,000 items in its collection of free eBooks.

Internet Archive US non-profit organization founded in 1996 in San Francisco by Brewster Kahle

The Internet Archive is a San Francisco–based nonprofit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge." It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, moving images, and millions of public-domain books. In addition to its archiving function, the Archive is an activist organization, advocating for a free and open Internet.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.